


Meta Collection

by liketreesinnovember



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-17 10:11:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 37
Words: 37,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18963151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liketreesinnovember/pseuds/liketreesinnovember
Summary: A collection of my metas from tumblr.





	1. Tyrion and Pod

Tyrion and Pod’s relationship is really interesting, and is another example of Tyrion’s “tender spot” for cripples, bastards, and broken things. It’s similar to his relationship with the Stark children, and it’s interesting to note that like with Jon, Bran, and Sansa, Tyrion inspires loyalty in Pod even though they aren’t really that close.

Show Pod is a bit different because he’s a lot older. Book Pod is only 12 years old in AGOT, and I’ve talked before about how Tyrion seems to have this interesting relationship with the child characters in particular. On one hand Tyrion treats Pod dismissively and sometimes harshly, making jokes at the boy’s expense, but it’s also clear that he cares about Pod and has a sort of almost parental role in his life. He tries to forbid Pod from fighting at the Blackwater, saying that he’s too young (which is later ironic when Pod saves Tyrion’s life), which shows that he wants to protect him and keep him safe. And for all that he makes fun of Pod’s shyness, he also tries to teach Pod and build up his confidence, which we see when he quizzes Pod about the House banners of the Dornish envoy.

> “The crowned skull of House Manwoody, bone and gold on black.” Pod sounded more confident with every correct answer. “The Manwoodys of Kingsgrave.”
> 
> […]
> 
> Tyrion was impressed. The boy’s not half stupid, once he gets his tongue untied. “Go on, Pod,” he urged. “If you get them all, I’ll make you a gift.”
> 
> […]
> 
> Tyrion laughed. “Nine, and well done. I could not have named them all myself.” That was a lie, but it would give the boy some pride, and that he badly needed.

I think it’s very similar to how Tyrion treats Jon, or Bran, or Sansa, or Penny. Pod has a certain innocence which I think Tyrion has a strong instinct to protect. I think he sees himself in Pod a bit, this kid who seems to have no one, who other people belittle and dismiss. I also think this is why he criticizes Pod, the way he intentionally needles Jon or is sometimes cruel to Penny. These characters have a childish innocence that Tyrion was never allowed to have, and I think that Tyrion on one hand reacts negatively to that (because he’s learned that behavior from his family) but also wants to help these characters and protect them.

And that kindness and care inspires huge devotion in Pod, because Pod is also lacking in a positive figure that he can look up to. The interesting thing about Tyrion’s relationships with all these kids is that he is remembered positively, as a kind figure, even in these small interactions that don’t seem to amount to much individually but do make a difference in the long run. Which is why Pod goes to such lengths to protect Tyrion during the battle at Blackwater Bay and clings to the idea of finding him after ASOS.


	2. Bran and Gormenghast

Considering that GRRM has stated that one of his influences for ASOIAF was the Gormenghast novels, I am certain he took inspiration from Steerpike climbing over the roofs of Gormenghast when he wrote Bran Stark climbing Winterfell.

The most obvious thing the two series have in common is the use of multiple pov characters, and some story parallels, but recalling Bran II, the description of Winterfell very much jumps out at me as influenced by Mervyn Peake’s vivid descriptions of Gormenghast caslte:

> To a boy, Winterfell was a grey stone labyrinth of walls and towers and courtyards and tunnels spreading out in all directions. In the older parts of the castle, the halls slanted up and down so that you couldn’t even be sure what floor you were on. The place had grown over the centuries like some monstrous stone tree, Maester Luwin told him once, and its branches were gnarled and thick and twisted, its roots sunk deep into the earth.

\- A Game of Thrones

Compare to how Peake describes his castle Gormenghast:

> Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls. They sprawled over the sloping arch, each one half way over its neighbour until, held back by the castle ramparts, the innermost of these hovels laid hold on the great walls, clamping themselves thereto like limpets to a rock. These dwellings, by ancient law, were granted this chill intimacy with the stronghold that loomed above them.

\- Titus Groan

Both castles seem to be almost living creatures that hold ancient wisdom for the climber. For both characters, climbing upon the roofs of the castle offers them a perspective hidden from others, and is also a metaphor for these characters leaving behind their old lives and gaining knowledge that other characters in the story don’t have access to.

> When he got out from under it and scrambled up near the sky, Bran could see all of Winterfell in a glance. He liked the way it looked, spread out beneath him, only birds wheeling over his head while all the life of the castle went on below. Bran could perch for hours among the shapeless, rain-worn gargoyles that brooded over the First Keep, watching it all: the men drilling with wood and steel in the yard, the cooks tending their vegetables in the glass garden, restless dogs running back and forth in the kennels, the silence of the godswood, the girls gossiping beside the washing well. It made him feel like he was lord of the castle, in a way even Robb would never know.

\- A Game of Thrones

In Titus Groan, Steerpike escapes from the mundanity of his life working in the kitchens to the roofs of Gormenghast, where he can watch over the denizens of the castle and manipulate them as he wishes. For Bran, climbing is an escape from his normal life that makes him feel that he has some unique knowledge that is hidden from even Robb, the future lord of Winterfell, and it’s this activity of climbing that will lead him to an even greater form of transcendent knowledge. While Steerpike uses the power this access to the castle gives him for evil, to insert himself into the lives of the people of the castle and gain power for himself, Bran will use this formerly inaccessible knowledge for the sake of humanity. The use of bird imagery in these descriptions and the idea of being able to watch the world, as if one were an outsider looking in, even a god, is very similar.

> He is climbing the spiral staircase of the soul of Gormenghast, bound for some pinnacle of the itching fancy - some wild, invulnerable eyrie best known to himself; where he can watch the world spread out below him, and shake exultantly his clotted wings.

\- Gormenghast

There’s also the tower imagery found in both:

> His favorite haunt was the broken tower. Once it had been a watchtower, the tallest in Winterfell. A long time ago, a hundred years before even his father had been born, a lightning strike had set it afire. The top third of the structure had collapsed inward, and the tower had never been rebuilt. Sometimes his father sent ratters into the base of the tower, to clean out the nests they always found among the jumble of fallen stones and charred and rotten beams. But no one ever got up to the jagged top of the structure now except for Bran and the crows.

\- A Game of Thrones

And in Peake’s writing about Gormenghast caslte:

> Over their irregular roofs would fall throughout the seasons, the shadows of time-eaten buttresses, of broken and lofty turrets, and, most enormous of all, the shadow of the Tower of Flints. This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow.

\- Titus Groan

Of course, the broken tower is majorly significant in Bran’s story, and along with other symbolism found here that is often associated with towers, such as birds/flying, watching/sight and the idea of reaching towards the sky/heaven/god, the tower is also one of the major arcana of the tarot and a symbol of change that can be both transcendent and destructive. I think it’s both GRRM’s way of nodding towards one of his literary influences as well as foreshadowing the knowledge that Bran will gain later, which represents both transcendence to a higher plane and the potential for obliteration of self/others.


	3. Tyrion's Rejection of Penny

I’ve seen a lot of criticism of Tyrion for rejecting Penny in ADWD, and I’ve written extensively on how Tyrion is not obligated to want to be kissed by Penny, nor is he cruel in his rejection of her. And I’ve also talked about how there’s a certain idea that he _should_ accept Penny’s kiss just because they both have dwarfism, and how this is ableism based on the idea that Tyrion being disabled means he shouldn’t have the same standards as everyone else. Tyrion’s thoughts about Penny do have a fair amount of internalized ableism, but that still doesn’t mean he is obligated to return her affections.

I’ve also talked before about how one of the reasons Tyrion rejects Penny is because he thinks she’s insincere:

> Finally she pulled back an inch or two. Tyrion could see his own reflection shining in her eyes. Pretty eyes, he thought, but he saw other things as well. A lot of fear, a little hope … but not a bit of lust. She does not want me, no more than I want her.     

Which might just be Tyrion projecting his own feelings that he is incapable of inspiring romantic attraction onto Penny, but you could back up Tyrion’s thoughts about Penny not really being attracted to him with what Penny says about how she’d never kissed anyone before and she thought they were both going to die. One of the things that we see over and over again in Tyrion’s chapters is his longing to be loved by someone who genuinely wants him, not out of consolation.

This particular part of the book is really sad because it’s so full of that longing, which is repeated in other characters’ narratives as well, and paralleled here in Tyrion’s thoughts. Most notably, we see this desire to be genuinely loved in Sansa’s narrative, and Sansa is also significantly mentioned here. Tyrion specifically mentions Sansa first as an excuse to Penny because he wants to avoid hurting her, and then as he is thinking to himself about all of the women that he has crossed paths with.

> “It was sweet,” lied Tyrion, “but I am married. She was with me at the feast, you may remember her. Lady Sansa.” 
> 
> “Was she your wife? She … she was very beautiful …”          
> 
> _And false. Sansa, Shae, all my women … Tysha was the only one who ever loved me. Where do whores go?_ “A lovely girl,” said Tyrion, “and we were joined beneath the eyes of gods and men. It may be that she is lost to me, but until **I** know that for a certainty I must be true to her.”     

Now, I’ve seen this line interpreted as Tyrion blaming Sansa for being “false”, but since Tyrion is talking more generally about _all_ the women he’s ever been with, and since he’s also feeling sad for Penny because he can’t return her affections, I think he’s using false here simply to mean that the marriage was false, that Sansa was a false wife not because of her own fault but because theirs was a forced marriage that remained unconsummated. Sansa also has similar thoughts of disillusionment about love and marriage after her marriage to Tyrion.

Tyrion’s thoughts here are mired in his very depressed state, and he’s thinking about love in general as something “false”, something that is out of reach for people like him, and Penny. He reflects that only Tysha ever loved him, and he follows that up with the line from his father that represents the unlikeliness that he will ever be able to find Tysha again, much less get back what he had with her. He paints a very fairytale picture for Penny of his marriage to Sansa, but of course it’s all a lie. His thoughts here turn to Penny and how he’s both sad for her and trying to distance himself from her, because she reminds himself of the ways that he himself is vulnerable, not only because they are both dwarfs but also because Tyrion sees his own longing for a genuine connection in her, something that he now feels is impossible for him.

> My perfect woman, Tyrion thought bitterly. One still young enough to believe such blatant lies.          
> 
> The hull was creaking, the deck moving, and Pretty was squealing in distress. Penny crawled across the cabin floor on her hands and knees, wrapped her arms around the sow’s head, and murmured reassurance to her. Looking at the two of them, it was hard to know who was comforting whom. 

His thoughts on her turn from mocking and bitter - with not just a bit of his own internalized ableism - to something softer and much sadder.

> The sight was so grotesque it should have been hilarious, but Tyrion could not even find a smile. _The girl deserves better than a pig_ , he thought. _An honest kiss, a little kindness, everyone deserves that much, however big or smal_ l. He looked about for his wine cup, but when he found it all the rum had spilled. _Drowning is bad enough_ , he reflected sourly, _but drowning sad and sober, that’s too cruel._     

Tyrion’s thought here that “everyone deserves a little kindness” echoes one of his very first and most famous lines, his love for “cripples, bastards, and broken things”. He reaches for the wine cup because he wants to drown out these thoughts, because it’s easier to dwell on his own hurt instead of showing empathy for others, but he literally can’t because the wine has spilled. And I think this is also true on a symbolic level, that this is one of the things that I think does make Tyrion one of the heroes in the end, that ultimately he can’t drown out his impulses towards goodness.


	4. Wild Speculation About the Ending of ASOIAF Plus Spoilers for Lost

> And when I die please let them bury me with a crossbow so I can thank the Father Above for his gifts the same way I thanked the Father Below.

I’ve kinda had the theory for a while that Tyrion’s role in the war for the dawn is going to be as a spanner in the works, which would fit thematically with his narrative of being a character who exists in a liminal space, “the good bad guy, the bad good guy,” as Peter Dinklage describes him, consistently underestimated and marginalized by those around him. Whether it be for good or evil, Tyrion will have an important and unexpected role. And here’s where things get crazy but hear me out. I think Tyrion is going to meet some kind of god or godlike figure or the great other masquerading as a god…and destroy it.

Yes, I said that Tyrion is going to kill a god.

I sometimes get a strong [Benjamin Linus](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Flostpedia.wikia.com%2Fwiki%2FBenjamin_Linus&t=NDA5MjVmOGYzMmUzYzQxZjEzZTc4YzM1YThjMGY1NTBjNWY1OWQwYix3Qkh5dElpVQ%3D%3D&b=t%3A0k0dCEVYI-zsDZ5-LRI_-w&p=https%3A%2F%2Fasoiafuniversity.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F161769350500%2Fwild-speculation-about-the-ending-of-asoiaf-plus&m=0) vibe from Tyrion, and this quote from Tyrion makes me think of the scene where [Ben kills Jacob](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fmarquee.blogs.cnn.com%2F2009%2F06%2F09%2Fwhy-did-ben-kill-jacob-on-lost%2F&t=YTRjNDMwY2I3NTM3ZDJjMDcyYTVmZWMxNzcyYjBhNjZmYmRmNmM1Yix3Qkh5dElpVQ%3D%3D&b=t%3A0k0dCEVYI-zsDZ5-LRI_-w&p=https%3A%2F%2Fasoiafuniversity.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F161769350500%2Fwild-speculation-about-the-ending-of-asoiaf-plus&m=0).

> At long last, “Ben” comes face to face with the mysterious “Jacob,” a character often spoken about but never seen till that episode. “Ben” follows every order given to him by the enigmatic “Jacob” over the years and wasn’t allowed to ever see him in person. He finally gets to meet him, but only because **he’s tagging along with another character who’s been granted an audience**. **Angry about “Jacob’s” lack of respect and why the other character got to see him so quickly, he asks, “What about me?”** Jacob just looks at him and says, “What about you?” And then, Ben stabs him.   
>   
> “That’s what he had to do. Jacob was so mean,” Emerson says, “Ben was **looking for a father**.”

  
While Ben is a much more clearly villainous character (I love the way Michael Emerson defends his character, though), I could see things playing out in a similar way with Tyrion: Daenerys meets the Great Other / Night’s King / Euron Greyjoy pretending to be a god, and he seeks out an audience with her, offering to make her his queen and promising her a throne greater than the one that she was denied as her birthright. Dany will almost fall to this temmptation. But then in comes Tyrion, “what about me?”, the dwarf who is not going to be seen as a threat until the final moment, the unwanted child, someone who’s been discounted since birth, whose entire narrative is about defining yourself based on what is in your heart vs what people try to make you into, this will be his final test. I think he’ll have to choose between giving in to the temptation of power and recognition and making a sacrifice for the good, and destroying the evil god-father figure will be his ultimate rejection of Tywin’s destructive and selfish legacy.


	5. Sansa and Animal Wife Folklore

Numerous times in the books the Starks are associated with skinchanging. The children’s connection to their wolves leads all the Stark children towards warging to various degrees. Robb is rumored to turn into a wolf during battle and the same rumor is spread about Sansa when she flees King’s Landing.

Some say that Sansa loses her Stark connection when Lady dies but I am going to argue that this connection is alive in a very important way.

In various folklore around the world, the animal wife is a shape changer, usually a beautiful woman who will shed her animal skin and gain the attentions of men. These stories often involve a man spying on the beautiful woman as she sheds her skin and stealing the skin so that she cannot turn back into her animal form and must remain with him as his wife.

Sansa is first sent south as Joffrey’s betrothed, and after Lady’s death she loses an essential part of her northern identity, and must hide that part of herself. Cersei tries to claim Lady’s skin but Ned sends it back north specifically so the Lannisters will never get hold of it.

In the animal wife tales and in asoiaf, the taking of skin illustrates ownership, domination, control over an individual. The total obliteration of the self. Sansa may be forced to hide who she really is, to marry against her will, even to change her name, but her wolf skin remains in Winterfell, untouched by those who wish to make her theirs, and Sansa will return to reclaim it one day.


	6. Sansa and Tyrion and the Search for the Lost Husband

 

It’s hard to talk about Sansa’s narrative and NOT talk about fairy tales, since they are referenced so often and so closely entwined with her story.

I’ve[ talked before](https://secretlyatargaryen.tumblr.com/post/139264066522/sansa-x-tyrion-as-beauty-and-the-beast) about how there are obvious references to the Beauty and the Beast tale in Sansa’s marriage to Tyrion. I’m also quite fond of [this interpretation of Sansa and Tyrion as Cupid and Psyche](https://secretlyatargaryen.tumblr.com/post/53290265120/onlyalittlelion-okay-no-but-srsly-tho-venuss), and that myth has long been considered the prototype of all Beauty and the Beast stories. It also belongs to a class of tale known as “the search for the lost husband,” of which one of the most well known stories is the Norwegian answer to Beauty and the Beast, titled East of the Sun and West of the Moon.

In the latter story, a young woman is taken by a great white bear to live in his castle, and given all the things she could need in the world. At night, she is visited by a mysterious man whose face she cannot see, and who is always gone by morning. The beats here are much the same as the Cupid and Psyche story. Psyche cannot see her lover’s face but comes to know him as very dear to her, despite being originally told that she would be wed to a monster.

Does this sound familiar?

 

> “Don’t lie, Sansa. I am malformed, scarred, and small, but …” she could see him groping “… abed, when the candles are blown out, I am made no worse than other men. In the dark, I am the Knight of Flowers.“ 
> 
> In East of the Sun and West of the Moon, the young maiden is warned by her mother that it might actually be a troll that she is sleeping with, and told to light a candle when he is sleeping so that she can look upon his face. The same thing happens to Psyche, who is also told to light a candle so that she can see who really comes to visit her at night.
> 
>  

_…when the candles are blown out…_

Of course, as in many tales, breaking the enchantment of night causes the magic to dissolve, and now that the young maiden has seen his face, the enchanted husband must leave her. In many versions of the story this is treated as a betrayal by the female protagonist of the story, although it is one of ignorance and lack of trust, rather than malice, understandable when one is dealing with an enchanted husband. Similarly, Sansa’s “betrayal” of Tyrion is not really a betrayal of him, as she bears him no ill will and is merely fleeing for her own survival and acting as an unwitting pawn in the game that the Tyrells and Littlefinger are playing.

In the Search for the Lost Husband, both husband and wife are separated by magic and physical distance. There are variations on the story, and parallels with other stories of enchanted brides and grooms. Sansa’s story also has parallels with the [animal bride tales](https://secretlyatargaryen.tumblr.com/post/160853003032/sansa-and-animal-wife-folklore) that pop up in various cultures, the most well-known of which is probably the Japanese Crane Wife tale, which is also a story about a lost spouse.

 

> “The northern girl. Winterfell’s daughter. We heard she killed the king with a spell, and afterward changed into a wolf with big leather wings like a bat, and flew out a tower window. But she left the dwarf behind and Cersei means to have his head.”
> 
> That’s stupid, Arya thought. Sansa only knows songs, not spells, and she’d never marry the Imp. 

In the Search for the Lost Husband, the young woman eventually is able to find and reunite with her enchanted husband after a long journey in which she must undergo many arduous tasks, and then she is able to finally lift the curse that prevents them from being together. These stories are largely female driven and it is the female protagonist who is the hero of the story, who reunites with and saves her love after undergoing her own journey of self growth and discovery.

I’d argue that both Sansa and Tyrion take on both the role of the enchanted bride/groom at various parts in the narrative, and the role of the hero/heroine who must search for their lost spouse and undergo a test of self along the way. Both are sent into exile, and both must undergo hardships and journeys of self-discovery where their very selves will be tested.

I’d also argue that Tyrion is undergoing his own search, for his lost first wife (who was also not who Tyrion believed her to be), although I don’t think he’ll find Tysha. Similarly, Sansa is currently hiding in the Vale and being pursued by various suitors who are often not what they appear to be. I do think that Tyrion and Sansa will reunite in the books, though, and that their marriage is still important to the narrative and will be important in future books.


	7. The Strings of Those Who Came Before: An Analysis of Tyrion and Tywin as Rulers - Part 1: Justice

Many times when people talk about Tyrion as a leader and a politician and tactician they talk about Tywin and Tywin’s influence, which makes sense because of course Tyrion is influenced by his father, but I do think people give too much credit to Tywin as a brilliant politician. I don’t think Tywin was as brilliant as a lot of people, both in universe and in the fandom, give him credit for. What he _was_ good at was projecting his authority and giving plausible deniability to anything negative attached to him, because he was in a position of power and knew how to wield that power to his benefit. This makes people, often his children, believe that he was brilliant and always right because he was good at convincing people of his authority, like a lot of violent and manipulative men are.

Tyrion _was_ influenced by his father, and most of that influence is negative because Tywin was awful and the most awful to Tyrion directly, and I’d argue that Tywin’s influence also had a bad affect on Tyrion as a ruler and that everything good that Tyrion did as a political leader was when he _wasn’t_ trying to emulate Tywin.

I ended up writing a lot and going on several tangents with this so I’ve broken it up into parts. What follows in this post is an analysis of Tyrion’s chapters using the keyword “justice” on asearchoficeandfire.com.

When we look at what Tyrion’s actual goals are as a leader, they couldn’t be much different from Tywin:

> “So what will you do, m'lord, now that you’re the Hand of the King?”
> 
> “Something Cersei will never expect,” […] “I’ll do … justice.” 

I don’t think Tywin wants to do justice. Tywin wants to make house Lannister great, even at the detriment of everything else (and ironically to the detriment of his own children as individuals).

Justice is a word that is hard to define, and the question of how to define justice can be found throughout Tyrion’s narrative, particularly when he is both compared to and contrasted with his father.

> “Is this how justice is done in the Vale?” Tyrion roared, so loudly that Ser Vardis froze for an instant. “Does honor stop at the Bloody Gate? You accuse me of crimes, I deny them, so you throw me into an open cell to freeze and starve.” He lifted his head, to give them all a good look at the bruises Mord had left on his face. “Where is the king’s justice? Is the Eyrie not part of the Seven Kingdoms? I stand accused, you say. Very well. I demand a trial! Let me speak, and let my truth or falsehood be judged openly, in the sight of gods and men.” 

What’s particularly interesting about Tyrion’s trial in the Vale is that even when pleading for justice here, he knows it’s his family name that wins him the justice of a fair trial.

> A low murmuring filled the High Hall. He had her, Tyrion knew. He was highborn, the son of the most powerful lord in the realm, the brother of the queen. He could not be denied a trial. 
> 
> Is justice really justice when it’s bought?
> 
> “Behold the king’s justice,” Lysa Arryn said. […]
> 
> Ser Vardis had been singularly silent. “My lady,” he said gravely, sinking to one knee, “pray give this burden to another, I have no taste for it. The man is no warrior. Look at him. A dwarf, half my size and lame in the legs. It would be shameful to slaughter such a man and call it justice.” 

The concept of trial by combat is so interesting, especially when we think about ideas of justice and what true justice looks like and how it is defined. A reader certainly would not call a fight to the death to determine guilt or innocence justice in any sense of the word. We would maybe call it _fair_ , but we wouldn’t call it justice. In Tyrion’s case it’s not even fair, until Bronn offers to take Tyrion’s place (and even then, Bronn takes advantage of Ser Vardis’ honor code, so not all that fair). But then you have to go back to the original accusation that Tyrion is standing trial for, which we as readers know he didn’t commit and which there isn’t any real evidence for.

So early on in the narrative you have the question of justice and Tyrion’s interactions with this world in which justice is not often done, although the word is thrown around quite often. This is a world that Tyrion knows how to work around, because he knows what this world is like for people like him, especially if they don’t have the right family name.

> He could not touch Cersei, he knew. Not yet, not even if he’d wanted to, and he was far from certain that he did. Yet it rankled, to sit here and make a mummer’s show of justice by punishing the sorry likes of Janos Slynt and Allar Deem, while his sister continued on her savage course. 

Right off the bat in King’s Landing, we have the contrast between the justice that Tyrion wants to do and the brutality of Joffrey, the self-interest of Cersei, and the legacy that Tywin wants to protect. Can Tyrion do justice while all his power comes from the self-serving interest of the Lannister regime?

Tyrion’s interactions with Oberyn Martell help to further highlight this contradiction.

> “Would that a council seat were all Martell came to claim,” Lord Tywin said. “You promised him vengeance as well.”
> 
> “I promised him justice.”
> 
> “Call it what you will. It still comes down to blood.” 

Tyrion here insists on a distinction between vengeance and justice, but to Tywin they’re all the same thing. To Tywin, of course, it all comes down to blood. When Tyrion threatens Lannister blood it doesn’t matter that he is trying to get justice for Alayaya, or that he’s trying to negotiate things with the Martells. Lannister blood is all that matters.

Oh, Tywin can certainly make a show of being just.

> “Prince Doran comes at my son’s invitation,” Lord Tywin said calmly, “not only to join in our celebration, but to claim his seat on this council, and the justice Robert denied him for the murder of his sister Elia and her children.”
> 
> Tyrion watched the faces of the Lords Tyrell, Redwyne, and Rowan, wondering if any of the three would be bold enough to say, “But Lord Tywin, wasn’t it you who presented the bodies to Robert, all wrapped up in Lannister cloaks?” None of them did, but it was there on their faces all the same. Redwyne does not give a fig, he thought, but Rowan looks fit to gag.

Tyrion comments in his narrative on the irony of Tywin offering justice for Elia and her children’s murders.

> When your enemies defy you, you must serve them steel and fire. When they go to their knees, however, you must help them back to their feet. Elsewise no man will ever bend the knee to you. And any man who must say ‘I am the king’ is no true king at all. Aerys never understood that, but you will. When I’ve won your war for you, we will restore the king’s peace and the king’s justice. 

Many people point to this quote to prove Tywin’s capability as a ruler, but I think they’re missing something, and I think it can be found in the last part of the quote which is often left out. Tywin says that they will restore peace and justice when the Lannisters have won the war, but not before. To Tywin, justice is something that can be offered and taken away by those with the power to deny it. The idea that a true king should not have to proclaim himself king is about power and being able to show yourself as powerful, not about capability as a ruler. Power is a shadow on the wall, after all, and Tywin knew this.

> “And when Oberyn demands the justice he’s come for?”
> 
> “I will tell him that Ser Amory Lorch killed Elia and her children,” Lord Tywin said calmly. “So will you, if he asks.“ 
> 
> “Ser Armory Lorch is dead,” Tyrion said flatly.
> 
> "Precisely. Vargo Hoat had Ser Amory torn apart by a bear after the fall of Harrenhal. That ought to be sufficiently grisly to appease even Oberyn Martell.”
> 
> “You may call that justice …“
> 
> "It is justice. It was Ser Amory who brought me the girl’s body, if you must know. He found her hiding under her father’s bed, as if she believed Rhaegar could still protect her. Princess Elia and the babe were in the nursery a floor below.” 
> 
> “Well, it’s a tale, and Ser Amory’s not like to deny it. What will you tell Oberyn when he asks who gave Lorch his orders?” 
> 
> “Ser Amory acted on his own in the hope of winning favor from the new king. Robert’s hatred for Rhaegar was scarcely a secret.” 
> 
> It might serve, Tyrion had to concede, but the snake will not be happy. “Far be it from me to question your cunning, Father, but in your place I do believe I’d have let Robert Baratheon bloody his own hands.”
> 
> Lord Tywin stared at him as if he had lost his wits. “You deserve that motley, then. We had come late to Robert’s cause. It was necessary to demonstrate our loyalty. When I laid those bodies before the throne, no man could doubt that we had forsaken House Targaryen forever. And Robert’s relief was palpable. As stupid as he was, even he knew that Rhaegar’s children had to die if his throne was ever to be secure. Yet he saw himself as a hero, and heroes do not kill children.” His father shrugged. “I grant you, it was done too brutally. **Elia need not have been harmed at all** , that was sheer folly. By herself she was nothing.” 
> 
> “Then why did the Mountain kill her?”
> 
> “Because I did not tell him to spare her.”

This whole conversation is so characteristic of the way Tywin sees the concept of justice, as something that can be bent to twist his own narrative and the one he is creating for House Lannister, and Tyrion tries to question it but Tywin’s able to retain plausible deniability by reasserting his authority and also excusing the brutality as something that wasn’t specifically intended, but an unfortunate side effect. Tywin does this A LOT. He does it repeatedly in the SAME SCENE, when the conversation moves from Elia to the Red Wedding and then to Sansa.

I doubt I mentioned her at all. I had more pressing concerns. Ned Stark’s van was rushing south from the Trident, and Ifeared it might come to swords between us. And it was in Aerys to murder Jaime, with no more cause than spite. That was the thing I feared most. That, and what Jaime himself might do.” He closed a fist. “Nor did I yet grasp what I had in Gregor Clegane, only that he was huge and terrible in battle. The rape … even you will not accuse me of giving that command, I would hope. Ser Amory was almost as bestial with Rhaenys. I asked him afterward why it had required half a hundred thrusts to kill a girl of … two? Three? He said she’d kicked him and would not stop screaming. If Lorch had half the wits the gods gave a turnip, he would have calmed her with a few sweet words and used a soft silk pillow.” His mouth twisted in distaste. “The blood was in him.

> ” _But not in you, Father. There is no blood in Tywin Lannister_. “Was it a soft silk pillow that slew Robb Stark?” 
> 
> “ **It was to be an arrow** , at Edmure Tully’s wedding feast. The boy was too wary in the field. He kept his men in good order, and surrounded himself with outriders and bodyguards.”
> 
> “So Lord Walder slew him under his own roof, at his own table?” Tyrion made a fist. “What of Lady Catelyn?” 
> 
> “Slain as well, I’d say. A pair of wolfskins. **Frey had intended to keep her captive, but perhaps something went awry**.”
> 
> “So much for guest right.” 

It is interesting to me that all of this brutality _just happens_ , Tywin didn’t _intend_  it, it just happened.

Is this justice?

 _There is no blood in Tywin Lannister_.

> “So much for guest right.”
> 
> “The blood is on Walder Frey’s hands, not mine.” 
> 
> Deniability again. _There is no blood in Tywin Lannister_.
> 
> “I suppose you would have spared the boy and told Lord Frey you had no need of his allegiance? That would have driven the old fool right back into Stark’s arms and won you another year of war. Explain to me why it is more noble to kill ten thousand men in battle than a dozen at dinner.” When Tyrion had no reply to that, his father continued. 

Just because Tyrion doesn’t answer does not mean that Tywin is right. It means that Tywin is good at convincing people that he’s right.

And then from there the conversation turns to “Arya” wedding Ramsay Bolton.

> “Arya Stark?” Tyrion cocked his head. “And Bolton? I might have known Frey would not have the stomach to act alone. But Arya … Varys and Ser Jacelyn searched for her for more than half a year. Arya Stark is surely dead.”
> 
> “So was Renly, until the Blackwater.” 
> 
> Shadows on the wall, everywhere.
> 
> The north will go to your son by Sansa Stark … if you ever find enough manhood in you to breed one. Lest you forget, it is not only Joffrey who must needs take a maidenhead.“
> 
> _I had not forgotten, though I’d hoped you had._  "And when do you imagine Sansa will be at her most fertile?” Tyrion asked his father in tones that dripped acid. “Before or after I tell her how we murdered her mother and her brother?" 

It’s fitting that this conversation and chapter ends with Tywin again trying to badger Tyrion into bedding Sansa, which Tyrion points out is especially grotesque after what has happened at the Red Wedding. Tywin seems not to understand why Tyrion would want to protect Sansa and in fact directs it back to Tyrion (”Why, do you plan to mistreat her?”) because his concept of the well-being of others is, well, non-existent.

The word “justice” also comes up after Tyrion is accused of Joffrey’s murder, and again in reference to Tywin, during Kevan’s speech about Tywin.

> "Do you think he would allow you to take the black if you were not his own blood, and Joanna’s? Tywin seems a hard man to you, I know, but he is no harder than he’s had to be. […] Just as it fell to him to rule this realm, when he was no more than twenty. He bore that heavy burden for twenty years, and all it earned him was a mad king’s envy. Instead of the honor he deserved, he was made to suffer slights beyond count, yet he gave the Seven Kingdoms peace, plenty, and justice. He is a just man. You would be wise to trust him.” 

George R R Martin is a master of irony in passages like this. Kevan basically makes excuses for Tywin’s abuse of Tyrion and says that Tywin is a just person who brought justice _while Tyrion is being tried for something he didn’t do_.

Oberyn points out the hypocrisy here very nicely.

> “Men are seldom as they appear. You look so very guilty that I am convinced of your innocence. Still, you will likely be condemned. Justice is in short supply this side of the mountains. There has been none for Elia, Aegon, or Rhaenys. Why should there be any for you? Perhaps Joffrey’s real killer was eaten by a bear. That seems to happen quite often in King’s Landing. Oh, wait, the bear was at Harrenhal, now I remember.” 

At Tyrion’s trial we also see the conflict between _what justice is_  first of all, and then the dichotomy between the desire for _justice_  and the desire for _vengeance_.

> “I did not do it. Yet now I wish I had.” He turned to face the hall, that sea of pale faces. “I wish I had enough poison for you all. You make me sorry that I am not the monster you would have me be, yet there it is. I am innocent, but I will get no justice here. You leave me no choice but to appeal to the gods. I demand trial by battle.” 

(”As I cannot be the hero, let me be the monster, and lesson them in fear in place of love.”)

> And if the Mountain triumphed, Doran Martell might well demand to know why his brother had been served with death instead of the justice Tyrion had promised him. 

Even if Tywin had not been killed, war with the Martells seems an inevitability, and Tywin’s justice is no justice.

> He had dreamed enough for one small life. And of such follies: love, justice, friendship, glory. As well dream of being tall. 

It’s also interesting here that Tyrion compares his dreams of justice with the thing that marks him as different from others, his dwarfism. Is justice real, or is it only a trick on the wall for the powerful to play with?

> “Are your Seven Kingdoms so different? There is no peace in Westeros, no justice, no faith … and soon enough, no food. When men are starving and sick of fear, they look for a savior.” 

What is justice and can true justice be done? These questions will continue to plague Tyrion as he makes his way to Daenerys.


	8. Tyrion, Penny, and Hop-Frog

I actually can’t believe that people think that if Penny dies it will teach Tyrion humility or that other people suffer more than him or whatever abled nonsense y'all wanna come up with. I’ve been thinking about this in some depth since I read Peter Dinklage talking about Poe’s “Hop-frog” and describing it as “beautiful and vicious.”

“Hop-frog” is a story about two dwarf jesters, male and female, who are grossly abused by the king and his court. One day, the abuse goes too far against Tripetta, the female dwarf, and Hop-frog plans a brutal and murderous revenge which he carries out. The story is unflinching and horrifying but Poe’s sympathies are clearly with the dwarves. Though Hop Frog is described as crippled and ugly, it is the King and his courtesans who take on a bestial appearance by the end of the story.

The name of Penny’s brother, Oppo, is also phonetically similar to Hop-frog. In ADWD we learn that Oppo was the victim of Cersei’s dwarf genocide, and Penny is initially seeking revenge against Tyrion for his death. Tyrion takes on the role of jester along with Penny in Oppo’s absence. The story is certainly different but there are a lot of similar elements and GRRM might have been influenced in some ways by Poe’s story, as it is one of a few regularly anthologized short stories with dwarf characters.

I’m also seeing the theory that Tyrion is in some way responsible for Penny’s death crop up again, and people are anxious to see violence done to Tyrion in revenge for Penny’s death. The problem is though that Tyrion already feels responsible for Penny (and has a dream about causing her death), and also is the only person who advocates for Penny and dislikes the way she accepts the ableist treatment of others. If something happens to Penny Tyrion should be the one getting revenge for it. Which actually might be what causes him to go down an even darker path in TWOW. I would actually love to see Tyrion go dark for Penny’s sake, although I’m sure the discourse will be awful as usual if it does happen.

Penny’s dad is nicknamed “Hop-Bean.” GRRM is definitely alluding to Poe’s story.


	9. Tyrion, Sansa, Kneeling

Here’s why it’s important that Sansa notices that Tyrion doesn’t have a stool during the wedding, and chooses to kneel out of empathy for him.

“No one had thought to bring a stool, however, and Tyrion stood a foot and a half shorter than his bride.”

That she 1) actually thinks about this and 2) rethinks her initial lack of empathy towards him shows more of an emotional and social intelligence than most people show in their everyday lives. And you know what this reminds me of?

[US sues Starbucks for firing dwarf from barista job](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fmobile-reuters-com.cdn.ampproject.org%2Fv%2Fs%2Fmobile.reuters.com%2Farticle%2Famp%2FidUSTRE74G60020110517%3Famp_js_v%3Da2%26amp_gsa%3D1%26usqp%3Dmq331AQCCAE%253D%23referrer%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.google.com%26amp_tf%3DFrom%2520%25251%2524s%26ampshare%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.reuters.com%252Farticle%252Fus-dwarf-starbucks-idUSTRE74G60020110517&t=M2VjZGUwMzMyNmQ4ZjUzYjU2NzQ5NmI2MDFhMDU5ZTA1NDhiZDkyMyxCT0tCcG8wbg%3D%3D&b=t%3A0k0dCEVYI-zsDZ5-LRI_-w&p=https%3A%2F%2Fasoiafuniversity.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F182543148616%2Fheres-why-its-important-that-sansa-notices-that&m=0)

“When the employee asked for a stool or small stepladder to perform her job, Starbucks denied the request and fired her that same day, claiming that she could be a danger to customers and workers, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.”

This happened in 2011, 11 years after A Storm of Swords was published and 3 years before the 4th season of Game of Thrones aired. In the show, the absence of the stool is because Joffrey actively maliciously removes it, but most scenarios like this play out in the real world simply because most people don’t think about accommodating disabled people. In the book, this does lead to a more malicious act when Joffrey decides to make Tyrion stand on Dontos, to call attention to his lack of accommodation and humiliate him even further. But most of the time this kind of ableism in the real world looks like a simple refusal, a simple lack of thought.

And that’s what most people are missing when they choose to focus on Sansa saying “why should I spare his feelings, when no one cares about mine?” instead of her decision to choose to care. Sansa answers her own question here and more people could stand to learn from her.


	10. North vs South and Gender Coding

I’ve talked before about how the books (and especially the show) emphasize the moralizing of the “good” North where people’s lives are simple vs the “evil and decadent” South, and how that also is rather obviously and unfairly gendered.

I’ve also talked before about how Tyrion is aligned with the feminine South because he’s disabled and thus not a “real” man. Tyrion when he’s in the North is constantly miserable, he complains about the cold, he is looked down on when he accepts furs to protect himself, he has to walk with a cane because his legs don’t work as well in such extreme cold.

And I think about what Jon says about King’s Landing in season 7, “why would anyone want to live that way?” Tyrion in that scene is the representative of King’s Landing and Jon represents the North, and we’re clearly supposed to be agreeing at least a little with Jon here. King’s Landing is crowded, dirty, overpopulated, and full of corruption.

I think the books imply that Tyrion spent a lot of time in King’s Landing pre-series and he probably preferred it to Casterly Rock. Initially I thought this was because he wanted to get away from his father as a young man, but a city like King’s Landing would be a better place for Tyrion precisely because of the reasons Jon looks down on it. More people in one place means more diversity, a higher likelihood that people there would have seen a person with dwarfism and thus Tyrion would not be so isolated by his disability. More people means more knowledge and resources and more accommodations for disabled people, less of a need to travel long distances under harsh conditions to get what you need. Contrast that with Tywin actively forbidding dwarfs from going near Casterly Rock.

If Bran were able to travel at the beginning of AGoT it actually might have benefitted him to go to King’s Landing, where he and his family might have had access to resources that would improve his quality of life.

The North is very much coded as male and able bodied and values physicality and endurance, which is also why the show contrasted Sansa’s more Southern political style with Jon’s in season 7 and made that a source of conflict between them even when it didn’t make much sense.

King’s Landing is feminine and the Lannisters are often associated with an effeminate kind of evil, especially when contrasted with the Starks, although I would also say that Casterly Rock and the Westerlands are masculine-coded. Casterly Rock is a vast impenetrable stone fortress and I think about Tyrion being kept away from other people, hidden literally beneath the earth as a baby with no mother to take care of him, I think about Cersei being slowly strangled inside that Rock and surrounded by her male relatives who all taught her to hate her femininity at the same time that they objectified her.

I also think Sansa is really interesting as the most feminine-coded Stark, the one whose direwolf was gentle and delicate, and I’m reminded of the Chinese concepts of Yin and Yang, the feminine and masculine qualities each containing a little of the other inside themselves, reminding us that such binaries are never fixed. Seeing Sansa in the show dressed like Ned but representing feminine power is really cool in that respect.


	11. Arya Stark is Important for Feminism, and Not Because She Has a Sword

And no, not because she’s “more empowered” or she “acts like a man”. Arya is important for women and girls who do not and cannot (and shouldn’t have to) conform to patriarchal standards of what femininity is.

Arya is important and sympathetic to many women because she’s a young girl who struggles with constant feelings of inadequacy because of the ridiculous standards placed on her by the patriarchy.

> Arya’s stitches were crooked again.      
> 
> She frowned down at them with dismay and glanced over to where her sister Sansa sat among the other girls. Sansa’s needlework was exquisite. Everyone said so. “Sansa’s work is as pretty as she is,” Septa Mordane told their lady mother once. “She has such fine, delicate hands.” When Lady Catelyn had asked about Arya, the septa had sniffed. “Arya has the hands of a blacksmith.”
> 
> Arya glanced furtively across the room, worried that Septa Mordane might have read her thoughts, but the septa was paying her no attention today. She was sitting with the Princess Myrcella, all smiles and admiration. It was not often that the septa was privileged to instruct a royal princess in the womanly arts, as she had said when the queen brought Myrcella to join them. Arya thought that Myrcella’s stitches looked a little crooked too, but you would never know it from the way Septa Mordane was cooing.

What’s interesting about this passage is not that Arya’s stitches are crooked, but in the last paragraph Arya thinks that Myrcella’s stitches are crooked, too, yet Myrcella isn’t put up to the level of scrutiny that Arya is because Myrcella is a royal princess who presents herself the way girls in this society are supposed to be seen. In contrast, Arya is constantly criticized for not being like her older sister. Sansa’s needlework is tied directly to her femininity “Sansa’s needlework is as pretty as she is”, while Arya is described as having “the hands of a blacksmith”. There’s an implication here that women who don’t conform to specific standards (standards that are defined by heterosexual men) aren’t “real” women. This causes anxiety in Arya because she’s a young girl, and she spent much of her formative experience being told that she was defective because of it. Even after she is somewhat freed from these standards, she still thinks about it often. She has anxiety about how her family won’t want her back after she’s lived as a boy and done “masculine” things. And yet she still struggles with trying to fit into even a nontraditional role, because society has no place for girls like her.

> She tried so hard to be brave, to be fierce as a wolverine and all, but sometimes she felt like she was just a little girl after all.

Arya may have a sword and knows how to use it, but she still struggles with the fact that she’s “just a little girl” and that society labels girls as weak.

I don’t think Arya is distanced from her femininity, but one of the things that I think people fail to take into account about Arya is her age. I have this unfortunate feeling that part of the reason people see Arya as less feminine, and therefore less feminist, is because she’s not quite old enough to be sexualized (the show is a bit of another matter, because Maisie Williams is older and quite pretty). This is why many young girls struggle with their femininity. Not very many girls want to play with swords but young girls aren’t weaponizing their femininity either. Little girls are often demeaned by the patriarchy because they aren’t old enough to be sexual objects, and like Arya, they haven’t learned how to “pass”, and many of them never will, because there are plenty of women who don’t fit patriarchal standards: disabled women, women of color, lesbian and bisexual and trans women, women who aren’t good at putting on make up or attracting a man or just don’t want to.

And that’s not only okay, it is wonderful and feminist and worthy of praise. This does not mean that the Sansas of the world don’t deserve our support, but Sansa isn’t “more feminist” than Arya or more relatable to “real women”. It’s misogynistic to even suggest that there’s such thing as a “real” woman, and it’s especially suspect when you’re defining womanhood using patriarchal standards.

The other thing I don’t like that I see often in this debate is the praising of Sansa as an example of a “good victim”, and the connotations that this often has for women who don’t fit traditional feminine roles defined by the patriarchy. It is absolutely vital and important to support women who are victims of abuse, and Sansa definitely needs this support, but the unfortunate aspect of this is Sansa’s abuse is often romanticized because she’s feminine and pretty. I like to call this “maiden in the tower” syndrome, because it lines up with the way that the patriarchy romanticizes the brutalization of beautiful women, reducing them to sexualized, tragic objects.

The way that Sansa is often praised usually runs along similar lines: She suffers prettily, she doesn’t talk back (because smart women don’t talk back), she uses her femininity as a weapon. And yeah, there are a lot of women and girls who are like Sansa, women who are trapped in their circumstances and have no choice but to try and play a role. But to say that Sansa is “more realistic” or “stronger” or that she is more relatable to abused women everywhere than other abused women in the text is exclusionary to women who don’t or can’t smile prettily in the face of abuse and use their femininity to manipulate men, women who aren’t viewed as sexy or feminine according to patriarchal standards. Women who don’t stay quiet, women who fight back even without success, women who aren’t smart or subtle or graceful who are trapped in abusive situations. Women who aren’t women at all, but little girls who are told that they need to be sexy and feminine in order to be worth anything before they’ve even reached puberty, because being appealing to men should be the ultimate goal.

This is why Arya is important, and why I will always disagree with people who say that she’s cliche or not realistic.


	12. Tyrion and Forced Marriage

Tyrion was coerced into this marriage by his father, and yes, that does make him a victim. You cannot say that Tyrion reasonably had a choice when he’s being put under political and familial pressure by someone who has a vast amount of power over him, and who has repeatedly used that power to demean and abuse him. Let’s look at the chapter together:

> “Your whoring is a weakness in you,” Lord Tywin said without preamble, “but perhaps some share of the blame is mine. Since you stand no taller than a boy, I have found it easy to forget that you are in truth a man grown, with all of a man’s baser needs. It is past time you were wed.”
> 
> _I was wed, or have you forgotten?_ Tyrion’s mouth twisted, and the noise emerged that was half laugh and half snarl.
> 
> “Does the prospect of marriage amuse you?”
> 
> “Only imagining what a bugger-all handsome bridegroom I’ll make.” A wife might be the very thing he needed. If she brought him lands and a keep, it would give him a place in the world apart from Joffrey’s court… and away from Cersei and their father.
> 
> On the other hand, there was Shae. _She will not like this, for all she swears that she is content to be my whore_.
> 
> That was scarcely a point to sway his father, however, so Tyrion squirmed higher in his seat and said, “You mean to wed me to Sansa Stark. But won’t the Tyrells take the match as an affront, if they have designs on the girl?”
> 
> “Lord Tyrell will not broach the matter of the Stark girl until after Joffrey’s wedding. If Sansa is wed before that, how can he take offense, when he gave us no hint of his intentions?”
> 
> “Quite so,” said Ser Kevan, “and any lingering resentments should be soothed by the offer of Cersei for his Willas.”
> 
> Tyrion rubbed at the raw stub of his nose. The scar tissue itched abominably sometimes. “His Grace the royal pustule has made Sansa’s life a misery since the day her father died, and now that she is finally rid of Joffrey you propose to marry her to me. That seems singularly cruel. Even for you, Father.”

Before even bringing up the subject of marriage Tywin starts in on a list of Tyrion’s flaws, plus reminds him that he’s a dwarf, then proceeds to tell him that “it’s time you were wed”. Not “what do you think about this?” but “this is what I have already decided you will do, and you will do it because you are weak and a dwarf and I control you.”

Tyrion immediately is triggered by the discussion, and recalls his childhood sexual abuse at the hands of Tywin. He can’t even respond, and Tywin takes the opportunity to further mock him.

Tyrion then thinks that at least having a wife will get him away from Joffrey and Tywin and Cersei. Give him a place in the world where he isn’t reliant on people who actively want to hurt him. Tyrion is conflicted here because at least this could be an option for escaping Tywin. 

But then there’s Shae, another reason for Tyrion to not want this marriage. However, “that was scarcely a point to sway his father”. **He doesn’t bring up his objections because he knows Tywin wouldn’t care.**

So Tyrion brings up the Tyrells as an objection, but Tywin refutes this and Kevan is there to back him up. Tyrion’s scar begins to itch - aka he’s being backed into a corner here and he knows it, he’s getting uncomfortable.

Then Tyrion brings up his next objection to the marriage. It would be cruel to Sansa. Sansa doesn’t want to marry a Lannister, not after what Joffrey has put her through.

> “Why, do you plan to mistreat her?” His father sounded more curious than concerned. “The girl’s happiness is not my purpose, nor should it be yours. Our alliances in the south may be as solid as Casterly Rock, but there remains the north to win, and the key to the north is Sansa Stark.”
> 
> “She is no more than a child.”
> 
> “Your sister swears she’s flowered. If so, she is a woman, fit to be wed. You must needs take her maidenhead, so no man can say the marriage was not consummated. After that, if you prefer to wait a year or two before bedding her again, you would be within your rights as her husband.”
> 
> _Shae is all the woman I need just now_ , he thought, _and Sansa’s a girl, no matter what you say_. “If your purpose here is to keep her from the Tyrells, why not return her to her mother? Perhaps that would convince Robb Stark to bend the knee.”
> 
> Lord Tywin’s look was scornful. “Send her to Riverrun and her mother will match her with a Blackwood or a Mallister to shore up her son’s alliances along the Trident. Send her north, and she will be wed to some Manderly or Umber before the moon turns. Yet she is no less dangerous here at court, as this business with the Tyrells should prove. She must marry a Lannister, and soon.”
> 
> “The man who weds Sansa Stark can claim Winterfell in her name,” his uncle Kevan put in. “Had that not occurred to you?”
> 
> “If you will not have the girl, we shall give her to one of your cousins,” said his father. “Kevan, is Lancel strong enough to wed, do you think?”
> 
> Ser Kevan hesitated. “If we bring the girl to his bedside, he could say the words… but to consummate, no… I would suggest one of the twins, but the Starks hold them both at Riverrun. They have Genna’s boy Tion as well, else he might serve.”
> 
> Tyrion let them have their byplay; it was all for his benefit, he knew. _Sansa Stark_ , he mused. Soft-spoken sweet-smelling Sansa, who loved silks, songs, chivalry and tall gallant knights with handsome faces. He felt as though he was back on the bridge of boats, the deck shifting beneath his feet.

Tywin mocks Tyrion for objecting to the marriage on the grounds that it would be cruel to Sansa. Tyrion says that Sansa is a child, Tywin says she’s not. Tyrion stops objecting but thinks to himself that Sansa is a child, no matter what Tywin says. But he knows he’s not getting anywhere so he tries another objection: why not send Sansa back to her mother?

The answer: because this is a power play. This is Tywin’s power play, and Tywin is perfectly willing to use both Tyrion and Sansa to accomplish what he wants.

Then Tywin tries another tactic, the “this is good for you Tyrion, if you won’t take her I’ll give her to someone else” thing. Tyrion knows that this is what Tywin and Kevan are doing, he recognizes that the “byplay” is “for his benefit”. This is all meant to manipulate Tyrion into _wanting_ to marry Sansa. Tyrion feels as if he’s back in battle, “the deck shifting beneath his feet”. He feels as if the situation is out of his control. Tyrion has already objected to this marriage several times, and been silenced by Tywin. How can you say that this is his choice?

> “You asked me to reward you for your efforts in the battle,” Lord Tywin reminded him forcefully. “This is a chance for you, Tyrion, the best you are ever likely to have.” He drummed his fingers impatiently on the table. “I once hoped to marry your brother to Lysa Tully, but Aerys named Jaime to his Kingsguard before the arrangements were complete. When I suggested to Lord Hoster that Lysa might be wed to you instead, he replied that he wanted a whole man for his daughter.”
> 
> _So he wed her to Jon Arryn, who was old enough to be her grandfather_. Tyrion was more inclined to be thankful than angry, considering what Lysa Arryn had become.
> 
> “When I offered you to Dorne I was told that the suggestion was an insult,” Lord Tywin continued. “In later years I had similar answers from Yohn Royce and Leyton Hightower. I finally stooped so low as to suggest you might take the Florent girl Robert deflowered in his brother’s wedding bed, but her father preferred to give her to one of his own household knights.
> 
> “If you will not have the Stark girl, I shall find you another wife. Somewhere in the realm there is doubtless some little lordling who’d gladly part with a daughter to win the friendship of Casterly Rock. Lady Tanda has offered Lollys…”
> 
> Tyrion gave a shudder of dismay. “I’d sooner cut it off and feed it to the goats.”
> 
> “Then open your eyes. The Stark girl is young, nubile, tractable, of the highest birth, and still a maid. She is not uncomely. Why would you hesitate?”
> 
> _Why indeed?_ “A quirk of mine. Strange to say, I would prefer a wife who wants me in her bed.”
> 
> “If you think your whores want you in their bed, you are an even greater fool than I suspected,” said Lord Tywin. “You disappoint me, Tyrion. I had hoped this match would please you.”

Tywin then hits Tyrion with “you asked for this! You wanted a reward!” He tries to guilt Tyrion into accepting, which is abusive especially considering how many times Tywin has told Tyrion that he’s ungrateful and used familial duty to be cruel to him.

Then there’s the old tactic of “nobody else wants you anyway, you’re an ugly dwarf and this is your best hope”.

Then Tywin offers Lollys, which he offers because he knows Tyrion will refuse it. Like, seriously, does anyone believe Tywin would actually let his son marry into house Stokeworth? This marriage is all about politics, remember? Marrying into House Stark benefits House Lannister, Tyrion marrying Lollys doesn’t. This was not a real offer, just another manipulation tactic to make Tyrion “realize” what a great chance this is for him. If Tywin wanted Tyrion to marry Lollys it would have already happened.

Tyrion again objects to the marriage to Sansa, saying that he wants a wife who wants him. Tywin rebuffs him with more mockery.

> “Yes, we all know how important my pleasure is to you, Father. But there’s more to this. The key to the north, you say? The Greyjoys hold the north now, and King Balon has a daughter. Why Sansa Stark, and not her?” He looked into his father’s cool green eyes with their bright flecks of gold.
> 
> Lord Tywin steepled his fingers beneath his chin. “Balon Greyjoy thinks in terms of plunder, not rule. Let him enjoy an autumn crown and suffer a northern winter. He will give his subjects no cause to love him. Come spring, the northmen will have had a bellyful of krakens. When you bring Eddard Stark’s grandson home to claim his birthright, lords and little folk alike will rise as one to place him on the high seat of his ancestors. You _are_ capable of getting a woman with child, I hope?”
> 
> “I believe I am,” he said, bristling. “I confess, I cannot prove it. Though no one can say I have not tried. Why, I plant my little seeds just as often as I can…”
> 
> “In the gutters and the ditches,” finished Lord Tywin, “and in common ground where only bastard weeds take root. It is past time you kept your own garden.” He rose to his feet. “You shall never have Casterly Rock, I promise you. But wed Sansa Stark, and it is just possible that you might win Winterfell.”
> 
> _Tyrion Lannister, Lord Protector of Winterfell_. The prospect gave him a queer chill. “Very good, Father,” he said slowly, “but there’s a big ugly roach in your rushes. Robb Stark is as _capable_ as I am, presumably, and sworn to marry one of those fertile Freys. And once the Young Wolf sires a litter, any pups that Sansa births are heirs to nothing.”

Tyrion correctly calls out that this has nothing to do with what Tyrion wants, and everything to do with Tywin’s political plans.

Tywin then tries to crush any other objections Tyrion might have by insulting his virility and then shaming him for sleeping with prostitutes. What a guy. He then reminds Tyrion that he has no chance of inheriting Casterly Rock, but that he might get Winterfell. Remember above when Tyrion thought about how much he wanted a place in the world where he wasn’t constantly under Tywin’s thumb, or threatened by Joffrey and Cersei?

Notice that he’s still not saying yes, though. He concedes to Tywin’s plan (after Tywin has silenced every objection he had) but then brings up Robb Stark as another reason why it’s a bad idea.

They talk about Robb and there’s heavy Red Wedding foreshadowing, I’m not gonna quote it all, but then we get this:

> Every once in a very long while, Lord Tywin Lannister would actually threaten to smile; he never did, but the threat alone was terrible to behold. “The greatest fools are ofttimes more clever than the men who laugh at them,” he said, and then, “You will marry Sansa Stark, Tyrion. And soon.”

This is the end of the chapter. There is no yes from Tyrion. Tywin talks mysteriously about his plans and then btw Tyrion, you are going to marry Sansa, and _soon._ It’s going to happen. There is no “well if you don’t want it to”. And Tyrion never says that he wants to. All he can do is say “very well” _after_ Tywin has crushed all of his disagreements.


	13. Daenerys and Hazzea + Tyrion, Arya, and PTSD

I hate the argument (that I’ve seen resurface lately) that Dany not remembering Hazzea’s name means she didn’t really care, or that she’s turning to villainy.

Dany repeating the name throughout ADWD is a reminder to herself about her duty towards her people and her desire to protect the innocent. She clings to the name in times of stress to give her hope for a better future, to remember what her goals are, and at the end of ADWD, when she is at her darkest, she tries to recall the name and cannot remember. But it’s not portrayed as moment of her forgetting about the innocent, or embracing violence. Here’s the full quote, which I don’t see often:

> “I am the blood of the dragon,” she told the grass, aloud.
> 
> Once, the grass whispered back, until you chained your dragons in the dark.
> 
> “Drogon killed a little girl. Her name was … her name …” Dany could not recall the child’s name. That made her so sad that she would have cried if all her tears had not been burned away. “I will never have a little girl. I was the Mother of Dragons.”
> 
> Aye, the grass said, but you turned against your children. 

Her reaction to not remembering Hazzea’s name is a deep sadness and guilt, and she relates the death of this innocent child back to herself, to the death of her child and to what she feels is a betrayal of her living children, the dragons. She’s not forsaking Hazzea for the dragons, she’s condemning herself for what she sees as a betrayal to her people AND the dragons, her children, and what they represent, which is the power she has to make a difference in the world. What this part of the book represents is the conflict between Dany’s mission, and her power to destroy as well as heal. “ _The human heart in conflict with itself_.”

That doesn’t make Dany evil, it makes her human.  
  


It also reminds me of what a lot of the characters experience when faced with their own trauma.

> He remembered the first time with Tysha as well. She did not know how, no more than I did. We kept bumping our noses, but when I touched her tongue with mine she trembled. Tyrion closed his eyes to bring her face to mind, but instead he saw his father, squatting on a privy with his bedrobe hiked up about his waist. “Wherever whores go,” Lord Tywin said, and the crossbow thrummed. 

It’s not that surprising that Tyrion does not remember Tysha’s face because the fact that it happened 10+ years ago plus the trauma surrounding what happened to him and Tysha as a child, plus the ADDITIONAL trauma of Tyrion’s confrontation with Tywin, make it seem like his thoughts here indicate PTSD/dissociation. He has similar moments when he tries to remember details of what happened, like how many men had been in the room, and can’t remember.

What do both these moments have in common? They are moments when characters try to hold on to a memory of an innocent whose brutalization they feel responsible for, but their memories are clouded by trauma and violence. Tyrion can only think of Tywin’s death. Dany can only think about the trauma and violence of her miscarriage and the chaining of her children (two things that are connected to each other). To say that it’s an indication of a character going mad or turning evil is…not true. These are incredibly tragic moments that show the guilt these character carry around with them as well as the violence that has been done to them and the trauma they feel over the violence done to others.

Do you know what ELSE it reminds me of?

> Sandor moaned, and she rolled onto her side to look at him. She had left his name out too, she realized. Why had she done that? She tried to think of Mycah, but it was hard to remember what he’d looked like. She hadn’t known him long. All he ever did was play at swords with me. “The Hound,” she whispered, and, “Valar morghulis.” Maybe he’d be dead by morning … 

Arya never _forgets_  about Mycah, but her memories of him do become fuzzy, and this memory is so enmeshed with her hatred of those who hurt others and the memory of the violence she has both witnessed and been subjected to, that it becomes a representation for both her own trauma and her own conflict between wanting _justice_  and wanting to do more violence to others.

These characters don’t forget the names and faces of the innocents who have died because they _don’t care_  or are becoming crazy or evil (although I have seen this argued about all three of these characters). What it represents is the trauma of the cycle of violence and these characters’ wish to break free from it. Whether or not they will be successful remains to be seen, but it doesn’t mean these characters, all who have a strong desire to protect innocents, have given up on that.


	14. Tyrion and Food

Going off of [this](http://joannalannister.tumblr.com/post/178494551161/okay-lauren-you-convinced-me-i-shall-take-the) awesome post by [@joannalannister](https://tmblr.co/m8tLPN-NsfT2b2s4aAdF3Sg), and also what I said about how we need to talk more about Tyrion and food, Tyrion’s love of food, like his love of wine and sex, are very important to his narrative. Food is life, food is joy in life, and food is also bodily autonomy, and Tyrion’s indulgences in life’s pleasures are there to affirm his determination to live even when others thought he would die, to live in a world that was not made for him, [a world that equates living as a disabled person to living as an ascetic.](http://secretlyatargaryen.tumblr.com/post/169042109427/i-take-a-different-view-if-there-is-food-i-eat)

> Medievalist fantasies are often dominated by scenes of war and sumptuous banquets. By deﬁnition, this life of danger and excess, of violence and orgy, ﬁts able people (particularly men) and would seem to exclude disabled people. Yet, this is Tyrion’s world, and he has learned to excel in both areas. ([x](http://secretlyatargaryen.tumblr.com/post/104188964897/the-most-prominent-disabled-character-in-the-song))

This connection is established in Tyrion’s very first chapter, when Tyrion interrupts his brother and sister’s breakfast, demands food, and disrupts the balance of things by implying that he knows the twins’ secret and giving cause for Jaime to wonder “whose side [he’s] on.”

> “Even if the boy does live, he will be a cripple. Worse than a cripple. A grotesque. Give me a good clean death.”
> 
> Tyrion replied with a shrug that accentuated the twist of his shoulders. “Speaking for the grotesques,” he said, “I beg to differ. **D** eath is so terribly final, while life is full of possibilities.”
> 
> Jaime smiled. “You are a perverse little imp, aren’t you?” 
> 
> “Oh, yes,” Tyrion admitted. “I hope the boy does wake. I would be most interested to hear what he might have to say.”
> 
> His brother’s smile curdled like sour milk. “Tyrion, my sweet brother,” he said darkly, “there are times when you give me cause to wonder whose side you are on.” 
> 
> **Tyrion’s mouth was full of bread and fish. He took a swallow of strong black beer to wash it all down, and grinned up wolfishly at Jaime.** “Why, Jaime, my sweet brother,” he said, “you wound me. You know how much I love my family.” 

In this scene, Tyrion is seen immensely enjoying his meal and looking “wolfishly” at Jaime, a word that implies a certain hunger and desire to consume. Tyrion confirms his status as not quite one of the Lannisters, but also affirms at the same time his place among them, and makes a statement in affirmation of his determination to enjoy life despite Jaime’s statement that life for people like Bran (and by extension Tyrion) is not worth living or devoid of enjoyment.

Contrast this scene, one of Tyrion’s first scenes, with his first chapter at the beginning of ADWD. Here, Tyrion has lost his connection to his Lannister name, and seems to have given up on the pride he usually takes in himself, and is even contemplating suicide. Consequently, his appetites have also diminished. He barely eats, foregoing life-giving food (and the food presented is extremely unappealing), and overindulges in wine in an attempt at self destruction (although he vomits that up, too).

> The rocking of the deck beneath his feet made his stomach heave, and the wretched food tasted even worse when retched back up. But why did he need salt beef, hard cheese, and bread crawling with worms when he had wine to nourish him? It was red and sour, very strong. Sometimes he heaved the wine up too, but there was always more. 

There is always more wine, creating a circular series of events, Tyrion overindulging and then ending up with an empty stomach yet again. On the ship to Essos his life has become an endless cycle of self-loathing and suicidal ideation.

At Illyrio’s, Tyrion, in his depressed and traumatized state, continues to refuse food, instead asking for wine, until he is confronted by Illyrio’s sumptuous table.

> They began with a broth of crab and monkfish, and cold egg lime soup as well. Then came quails in honey, a saddle of lamb, goose livers drowned in wine, buttered parsnips, and suckling pig. The sight of it all made Tyrion feel queasy, but he forced himself to try a spoon of soup for the sake of politeness, and once he had tasted it he was lost. The cooks might be old and fat, but they knew their business. He had never eaten so well, even at court. 

For all his cynicism and self-loathing, Tyrion can’t yet get rid of that part of himself that joys in life’s pleasures, and once he tastes the food, he is lost. But here, food becomes a double edged sword, also carrying the potential for destruction, and the danger here is especially seductive.

> Tyrion speared a goose liver on the point of his knife. No man is as cursed as the kinslayer, he mused, but I could learn to like this hell. 

Tyrion is in a symbolic hell, and is offered a pomegranate in the form of a mushroom. (And winter is coming, but Tyrion’s earliest memories are of spring.)

“Mushrooms,” the magister announced, as the smell wafted up. “Kissed with garlic and bathed in butter. I am told the taste is exquisite. Have one, my friend. Have two.” 

Tyrion had a fat black mushroom halfway to his mouth, but something in Illyrio’s voice made him stop abruptly.

In contrast to Tyrion’s earlier determination to survive despite the odds against him, here he contemplates how easy it would be to give in.

> “The pain is not so much, I am told. Some cramping in the gut, a sudden ache behind the eyes, and it is done. Better a mushroom than a sword through your neck, is it not so? Why die with the taste of blood in your mouth when it could be butter and garlic?“ 
> 
> The dwarf studied the dish before him. The smell of garlic and butter had his mouth watering. Some part of him wanted those mushrooms, even knowing what they were. He was not brave enough to take cold steel to his own belly, but a bite of mushroom would not be so hard. That frightened him more than he could say. 

If food represents like, it also represents the allure of death, specifically the allure of an easy death. But more importantly, I think it represents the allure of apathy, and the danger of a life not well-lived.

> "You mistake me,” Tyrion said again, more loudly. The buttered mushrooms glistened in the lamplight, dark and inviting. “I have no wish to die, I promise you. I have …” His voice trailed off into uncertainty. _What do I have? A life to live? Work to do? Children to raise, lands to rule, a woman to love?_

If Tyrion is to survive the winter, he must regain that sense of determination to live, and find what it is that he _has_ , that makes his life worth living.

Of course, the mushrooms turn out not to be poisoned at all, and Illyrio punctuates this reveal by eating one himself. The danger here Tyrion faced was only an existential one, and the meaning is double, because the other danger faced is Tyrion’s own cynicism. His paranoia about the mushrooms highlights his depressed and destitute state. To survive, Tyrion must find balance in his life. That goes for his other indulgences, too, but here I’m primarily talking about food so I’ll save that for another post.


	15. Sansa and Compulsory Femininity

I see a lot of meta about how Sansa embraces the feminine role expected of her and uses that to help her survive the abuse she faces, but not a lot of discussion of how that takes a toll on her emotionally. Sansa does what she _has_ to do, which is not something she should be criticized for, but it also destroys her inside, and by the time she gets to the Vale she feels empty and hollow and violated. That’s what this whole section of text is about:

> When she opened the door to the garden, it was so lovely that she held her breath, unwilling to disturb such perfect beauty. The snow drifted down and down, all in ghostly silence, and lay thick and unbroken on the ground. All color had fled the world outside. It was a place of whites and blacks and greys. White towers and white snow and white statues, black shadows and black trees, the dark grey sky above. **A pure world, Sansa thought. I do not belong here**.
> 
> Yet she stepped out all the same. Her boots tore ankle-deep holes into the smooth white surface of the snow, yet made no sound. Sansa drifted past frosted shrubs and thin dark trees, and wondered if she were still dreaming. Drifting snowflakes brushed her face as light as lover’s kisses, and melted on her cheeks. At the center of the garden, beside the statue of the weeping woman that lay broken and half-buried on the ground, she turned her face up to the sky and closed her eyes. She could feel the snow on her lashes, taste it on her lips. It was the taste of Winterfell. The taste of innocence. The taste of dreams. 
> 
> When Sansa opened her eyes again, she was on her knees. She did not remember falling. It seemed to her that the sky was a lighter shade of grey. Dawn, she thought. Another day. Another new day. It was the old days she hungered for. Prayed for. But who could she pray to? The garden had been meant for a godswood once, she knew, but the soil was too thin and stony for a weirwood to take root. **A godswood without gods, as empty as me**. 

I mean, I think it’s great that Sansa finds strength in her femininity, but she’s not really using it on her own terms when she is forced to perform a role for people who want to use her body for their own political gain. Plus, she’s a child and it’s absolutely horrific for her to have to do that. Not that I think women can’t be empowered by embracing femininity, but I think empowerment and agency are difficult to parse when we’re talking about this kind of situation, and I just have to wonder what the cost is.

> “The price is you. The price is all you have and all you ever hope to have. We took your eyes and gave them back. Next we will take your ears, and you will walk in silence. You will give us your legs and crawl.”

Which is a quote from Arya’s narrative but the two girls are on similar journeys of self discovery. Sansa has learned that a world in shades of black and white, a “pure world”, is one in which she can no longer reside, because she’s had to grow up much too quickly, the way girls often do. She steps out into this world all the same, she tastes the innocence of her past if only for a moment, but the new day is dawning and this day is dawning in shades of gray. She cannot go back to that black and white world of her childhood, the world where ladies were pure and knights were always honorable.

A few years ago the discourse surrounding Sansa and Arya used to be that Arya was “losing herself” while Sansa was keeping the things that made her valuable, most notably her kindness and her courtesy. But Sansa does change, and her relationship to those things changes as well, and she loses a part of herself in the process. The part of herself that believes that chivalry is always just, and women were always protected.

Now, I don’t think that means she will or should forgo her femininity or her courtesy or her kindness, but rather I think that what Sansa’s narrative is moving towards is a realization that kindness and gentleness should be given where deserved, that women should not always be good and accommodating to men. I don’t think she’s there yet, though, nor do I think her encounters with Harry the Heir are on her own terms, when Littlefinger is manipulating her behind the scenes, and when her initial reactions to Harry were hurt and repulsion.

I wrote [a meta once](http://secretlyatargaryen.tumblr.com/post/162341752807/aryas-journey-is-very-much-a-feminine-one-and-i) about how Arya’s narrative is very feminine because it is about the struggle to not lose yourself against the expectation that girls and women face in a patriarchal society, to become small and accommodating, to devote all you have to the desires of others until there is nothing left of _you_ , and I think Sansa’s narrative is similar in this respect.

> “You will be no one’s daughter, no one’s wife, no one’s mother. Your name will be a lie, and the very face you wear will not be your own.” 

“A woman’s armor is courtesy” is really another way of saying this. Patriarchy teaches women that their best defense is to be accommodating and pleasing, to leave themselves open to others.

In King’s Landing Sansa was forced to bow and curtsy and deny her true self. In the Vale she is forced to take on a new name, a new identity, a new father, a new exchange of patriarchal ownership. Everywhere she is required to be an empty vessel, a godswood without gods.

When she is left alone in the godswood in the Vale, she chooses to fill this emptiness with the things that really matter to her, with Winterfell and memories of her family.


	16. Tyrion and Daenerys

One of the things that I see every now and then is the idea that Tyrion does not really/will not really care about Dany and what she represents when/if he meets her and joins her, because he only cares about getting revenge on his family. Which is not something I agree with because I think it’s been pretty clear that Tyrion is being set up to be on board with Team Dany, and she with him.

> “I know that she spent her childhood in exile, impoverished, living on dreams and schemes, running from one city to the next, always fearful, never safe, friendless but for a brother who was by all accounts half-mad … a brother who sold her maidenhood to the Dothraki for the promise of an army. I know that somewhere out upon the grass her dragons hatched, and so did she. I know she is proud. How not? What else was left her but pride? I know she is strong. How not? The Dothraki despise weakness. If Daenerys had been weak, she would have perished with Viserys. I know she is fierce. Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen are proof enough of that. She has crossed the grasslands and the red waste, survived assassins and conspiracies and fell sorceries, grieved for a brother and a husband and a son, trod the cities of the slavers to dust beneath her dainty sandaled feet.”

Even though Tyrion’s actual motive when he gives this speech is to shut down Aegon, what he says is far too powerful to be something he doesn’t actually believe to be true. He doesn’t even know Dany at this point, only what he’s heard about her, and this is a pretty impassioned speech about someone he’s never met.

And it makes sense. Daenerys is a rags to riches story and I think Tyrion, for all his cynicism, would be drawn to that. She appeals to Tyrion’s secret idealism and his experiences as someone who has suffered injustice because of the way he was born.

> When he was still a lonely child in the depths of Casterly Rock, he oft rode dragons through the nights, pretending he was some lost Targaryen princeling, or a Valyrian dragonlord soaring high o'er fields and mountains. 

Tyrion might have become on board with Illyrio’s plan simply because he had no other options, he might have been motivated in the beginning only by revenge, but Daenerys is literally the lost Targaryen heir from his childhood dreams, complete with three freaking dragons. And even ADWD Tyrion can’t completely divorce himself from his inner idealism:

> He had dreamed enough for one small life. And of such follies: love, justice, friendship, glory. 

Daenerys is an idealist and an idealized figure, regarded as a savior by many.

> “I told you, I know our little queen. Let her hear that her brother Rhaegar’s murdered son is still alive, that this brave boy has raised the dragon standard of her forebears in Westeros once more, that he is fighting a desperate war to avenge his father and reclaim the Iron Throne for House Targaryen, hard-pressed on every side … and she will fly to your side as fast as wind and water can carry her. You are the last of her line, and this Mother of Dragons, this Breaker of Chains, is above all a rescuer.”

Not only is Dany a savior figure, but she’s regarded as a **mother** to her people, literally called mother, mother to slaves, mother to dragons. Tyrion, in contrast, spent his whole life without a mother, deprived of that most primal form of human intimacy.

> _Help me, someone help me. Jaime, Shae, Mother, someone …_

For Dany’s part, she protects Tyrion and Penny when they are forced into the arena, and defend their rights as human beings, twice over because they’ve been denied rights as slaves and as dwarfs. Daenerys sees the humanity in people who have been systematically dehumanized. Tyrion has been dehumanized his entire life because of his dwarfism.

Tyrion, in a very dark place emotionally when he gets to Meereen, mocks the slaves’ faith in Daenerys:

> And then she’ll bake us all a lemon pie and kiss our widdle wounds and make them better, the dwarf thought. He had no faith in royal rescues. 

But I would argue that Tyrion is not the cynic he tries to present himself as, even in ADWD. I think he will find himself believing in Daenerys’ cause despite himself. Tyrion has a pattern of deciding not to care about people but ending up caring anyway, especially with young, pretty women. I think he will be conflicted about Daenerys, but I think he will develop some kind of feeling for her and her cause.

There’s also a bit of “monster” imagery associated with Dany, which links her to Tyrion, for whom the word “monster” appears a lot in the narrative and has significance as a label that has been thrust upon him.

Mother or dragons is a powerful invocation, but it also invokes the monstrous. Dany calls the dragons her children and believes that she cannot issue human children from her own womb. She likens herself as kin to the dragons.

> Mother of dragons, Daenerys thought. Mother of monsters. What have I unleashed upon the world? A queen I am, but my throne is made of burned bones, and it rests on quicksand. Without dragons, how could she hope to hold Meereen, much less win back Westeros? I am the blood of the dragon, she thought. If they are monsters, so am I.

  

There’s also some monstrous imagery that appears associated with Dany in one of Tyrion’s ADWD POV chapters, and Tyrion makes a comparison to himself that could possibly hint at a romantic/sexual connection between Tyrion and Dany.

> "Sweet?” Qavo laughed. “If even half the stories coming back from Slaver’s Bay are true, this child is a monster. They say that she is bloodthirsty, that those who speak against her are impaled on spikes to die lingering deaths. They say she is a sorceress who feeds her dragons on the flesh of newborn babes, an oathbreaker who mocks the gods, breaks truces, threatens envoys, and turns on those who have served her loyally. They say her lust cannot be sated, that she mates with men, women, eunuchs, even dogs and children, and woe betide the lover who fails to satisfy her. She gives her body to men to take their souls in thrall.”    
> 
> Oh, good, thought Tyrion. If she gives her body to me, she is welcome to my soul, small and stunted though it is.   

This speaks of a connection between Tyrion and Dany, body and soul, although I don’t necessarily think it will be a romantic or sexual connection. I don’t know what will come of this, but the imagery is there. I don’t know what Tyrion and Dany’s relationship will be like in the books but I am absolutely sure that it will be significant.


	17. Tyrion and Sansa's Wedding, Dancing, Mannerpunk Horror

One of the saddest parts of the Tyrion/Sansa wedding is the scene where Sansa asks Tyrion to dance. Despite how awful this situation is for Sansa and her terror during the wedding, she still wants to dance simply because she loves it.

> When the musicians began to play, she timidly laid her hand on Tyrion’s and said, “My lord, should we lead the dance?”                  
> 
> His mouth twisted. “I think we have already given them sufficient amusement for one day, don’t you?”                 
> 
> “As you say, my lord.” She pulled her hand back.
> 
> Joffrey and Margaery led in their place. How can a monster dance so beautifully? Sansa wondered. She had often daydreamed of how she would dance at her wedding, with every eye upon her and her handsome lord. In her dreams they had all been smiling. Not even my husband is smiling.

And for Tyrion, it’s another reminder of how he falls short as a husband and a man, which isn’t Sansa’s fault, but it, like the[ cloaking](http://secretlyatargaryen.tumblr.com/post/148745514702/so-im-tackling-the-whole-kneeling-thing-again) and the bedding, is another example of how Tyrion is disabled by society’s perceptions of him.

Dancing at her wedding is something Sansa thinks she should be able to do, in fact, it is expected, the way it is expected that her husband be able to cloak her in his house colors and his chivalrous protection, and it’s all part of the romantic ideal that she wants. And she’s not wrong for wanting that, but for Tyrion the dancing is just another opportunity for him to be made a pariah because of his disability. So Tyrion responds to Sansa’s request with bitterness that has actually very little to do with Sansa herself. Which maybe is insensitive on his part, but then, he lives in a society that doesn’t prioritize his feelings at all, so it’s hard to fault him for prioritizing his own needs even as he tries, and sort of fails, to help Sansa because he knows that what is being done to her is wrong, and that he’s complicit in it. He also is aware somewhat that it’s wrong for Tywin to force him to be complicit in it, but he has a hard time separating those two things because Tywin has already made him complicit in his own abuse his whole life and convinced him that this is a natural state because of his dwarfism.

> “Lady Sansa.” Ser Garlan Tyrell stood beside the dais. “Would you honor me? If your lord consents?”          
> 
> The Imp’s mismatched eyes narrowed. “My lady can dance with whomever she pleases.”                  
> 
> Perhaps she ought to have remained beside her husband, but she wanted to dance so badly … and Ser Garlan was brother to Margaery, to Willas, to her Knight of Flowers. “I see why they name you Garlan the Gallant, ser,” she said, as she took his hand.

I also think for Sansa the dance represents what a society that commodifies women and girls has told Sansa, that she can make this better if only it were framed in the romantic ideal she was promised. If her husband had been smiling, if he had been tall and handsome, if things were the way they were supposed to be, everything would be okay even though it’s very much not. Which is also how Garlan tries to frame it when he tries to make Sansa feel better about being married to Tyrion.

> “A bride at her wedding should be more than well.” His voice was not unkind. “You seemed close to tears.”
> 
> “Tears of joy, ser.”          
> 
> “Your eyes give the lie to your tongue.” Ser Garlan turned her, drew her close to his side. “My lady, I have seen how you look at my brother. Loras is valiant and handsome, and we all love him dearly … but your Imp will make a better husband. He is a bigger man than he seems, I think.”

Garlan recognizes that Sansa is unhappy but seems to misinterpret the source, and tries to cheer Sansa up by framing Tyrion as ideal-husband material, “a bigger man than he seems”, by contrasting him with Loras (and I’m entirely sure that what he says about how Tyrion will make a better husband is a nod to Loras’ homosexuality). Which is kind of what Tyrion does when he tries to affirm his own manhood by acting hypersexual, to make up for his disabled body. I’m also going to note here Tywin and Lysa’s questioning of Tyrion’s virility because of his dwarfism.

In reality it’s neither Tyrion’s qualifications as a husband or Sansa’s failure to be the perfect bride that make this situation wrong. Scenes like this are what pushes Martin’s books outside the genre conventions of fantasy and into something like [mannerpunk](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FFantasy_of_manners&t=MTExZWJjZTkyNmFmMmI3NDBmN2NhNmFmOTBjYzYxZDE2ZGZkYjFmZixnaTZSZ2NUVA%3D%3D&b=t%3AJnzxZwybDPaSWyBuXZ_E6g&p=https%3A%2F%2Fthemaesters.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F175860370133%2Fsecretlyatargaryen-one-of-the-saddest-parts-of&m=1) horror.


	18. Tyrion and Sansa and Gender Roles

Sansa Stark, he mused. Soft-spoken sweet-smelling Sansa, who loved silks, songs, chivalry and tall gallant knights with handsome faces. He felt as though he was back on the bridge of boats, the deck shifting beneath his feet. 

I have a few times seen this quote used to say that Tyrion doesn’t understand Sansa or thinks she’s stupid or _too girly_ or shallow or something, but it’s really less about Sansa and more about Tyrion’s insecurity about himself as a man. And Tyrion’s relationship with his disabled masculinity and how that affects his interactions with women is intensely interesting to me. (Particularly his interactions with Sansa, because I ship them, but also in general.)

The women that Tyrion associates himself with are not the types that are considered to be a feminine ideal by Westerosi standards. Gender roles become more strict in a feudal society the higher in class you get, so it’s not very surprising to me that Tyrion’s first, and only real relationship with a woman that did not involve money or coercion, was with Tysha, a common-born girl. And I’ve talked before about how Tyrion takes on a more feminine/nurturing role in the rescue of Tysha as opposed to Jaime who immediately plays the knight in shining armor. Tyrion’s failure to perform traditional masculinity is less important to Tysha than it would be in a high born match.

Other women that Tyrion associates with are sex workers, the opposite of the feminine ideal in a world that dichotomizes women as either ladies or whores. In the books, it’s often stated by others that associations with such women are seen as fitting for someone like Tyrion, where they would be unacceptable for a high born man. It is tolerated and expected that high born men might use these women for sex, but to openly associate with them is seen as perverse.

When Tywin tells Tyrion he is going to marry Sansa he lists off names of high born women who he tried to match him with, but the matches were all rejected. A person with Tyrion’s disability is seen as unfit for a high born maiden.

Sansa occupies an interesting space because she’s idealized as the perfect image of femininity by many of the people around her, but she’s also treated as damaged goods, daughter of a traitor, cast off and abused by Joffrey. Sansa represents to Tyrion both the things he can’t have - a part of a world where he is forever out of place, the world of knights and ladies - and a parallel to both Tysha, who he could not protect, and himself. _“When I was your age, I wanted the same thing.”_


	19. Tyrion, Jaime, and Deconstructing the Chivalric Romance

One of the big themes of asoiaf as I see it is the deconstruction of chivalry. And when I refer to the term _deconstruction_ I don’t mean the same thing as _subverrsion_ , even though these two terms are often used synonymously. A deconstruction is when a trope is twisted around, subverted, taken apart, and then put back together to make something new. Martin uses many of his characters for this purpose. He turns his characters inside out and takes them apart in order to get closer to the real story he’s telling, “the only story worth telling […] the human heart in conflict with itself.”

> One of the ways he does this is by setting up Tyrion and Jaime as sometime parallels of each other. This is made pretty obvious from the beginning of AGOT from the first glimpse of the Lannister brothers we get in the series, through the eyes of Jon Snow:
> 
> The Lion and the Imp; there was no mistaking which was which. Ser Jaime Lannister was twin to Queen Cersei; tall and golden, with flashing green eyes and a smile that cut like a knife. He wore crimson silk, high black boots, a black satin cloak. On the breast of his tunic, the lion of his House was embroidered in gold thread, roaring its defiance. They called him the Lion of Lannister to his face and whispered “Kingslayer” behind his back.    
> 
> Jon found it hard to look away from him. This is what a king should look like, he thought to himself as the man passed.    
> 
> Then he saw the other one, waddling along half-hidden by his brother’s side. Tyrion Lannister, the youngest of Lord Tywin’s brood and by far the ugliest. All that the gods had given to Cersei and Jaime, they had denied Tyrion. He was a dwarf, half his brother’s height, struggling to keep pace on stunted legs. His head was too large for his body, with a brute’s squashed-in face beneath a swollen shelf of brow. One green eye and one black one peered out from under a lank fall of hair so blond it seemed white. Jon watched him with fascination. 

Jon is fascinated by the dichotomy present between the brothers, as a boy who himself occupies a liminal space as a bastard raised in a noble household. Jon is very familiar with the concepts of chivalry and knighthood, concepts which also serve to reinforce the status quo, the divine right of kings, and the belief that those who were unfortunate enough not to be favored by the gods were inherently morally inferior.

One of the ways that GRRM deconstructs these concepts here is by playing with appearances. Jaime is “what a king _should_ look like”, while Tyrion is contrasted unfavorably with the rest of the Lannisters, who are described with imagery invoking nobility. But GRRM also emphasizes the point that appearances can be deceiving. There is something rotten behind all of Jaime’s kingly glory: his green eyes are “flashing” and his smile “cut like a knife”, while his cloak and boots are black. While at face value he might appear to be the perfect image of nobility and knighthood, behind his back he is called “kingslayer”. This is the first indication that we have of Jaime’s complicated relationship with chivalry and his status as a knight.

Tyrion, by contrast, is not a knight, and can never be one. He is openly called Imp, and has to work harder to be seen as a respected member of his family. His relationship with chivalric values is quite different from Jaime’s because whereas Jaime’s conflict comes from expectations that he behave in accordance with corrupt chivalric values, the expectation for Tyrion is that he is the monster in the songs. As the series progresses, Jaime will attempt to get back to that state of assumed nobility, whereas Tyrion has to prove that he is not the monster he was expected to be since birth.

GRRM sets this up by showing the irony of appearances, by giving both Jaime and Tyrion kingly imagery, but Tyrion’s is associated with shadows, with hidden value that lurks below the surface:

> “Remember this, boy. All dwarfs may be bastards, yet not all bastards need be dwarfs.” And with that he turned and sauntered back into the feast, whistling a tune. When he opened the door, the light from within threw his shadow clear across the yard, and for just a moment Tyrion Lannister stood tall as a king.   

What Tyrion says to Jon here is important. The above statement is not as often quoted as the previous part, about never forgetting what you are and reclaiming what is used against you, but I think it’s equally as important. Tyrion may be assumed to have bastard status because of his disability, but what he’s telling Jon here is that he is not defined by his bastardry, that he does not have to accept the role assigned to him by society. In the scene quoted above, light reveals what is hidden in darkness. Shadows often show us who we really are. In the shadows, a bastard can become noble, and dwarf can become a king.

Which makes me think of a famous quotation:

“Character is what you are in the dark.” - Dwight L. Moody

Which I think GRRM _had_ to have been thinking of when he had Tyrion say “In the dark I am the knight of flowers,” which brings me to a discussion of Tyrion and Jaime and their relationship to chivalry as it applies to romance/sex.

I’ve written before about Tyrion and Jaime’s reactions to the Tysha incident, and how Jaime’s response of wanting to track down and punish the rapists is a performative masculine display of chivalry that fits in with Martin’s deconstruction of chivalry as an institution that fails to do what it is ostensibly supposed to do, which is protect women. Jaime’s preoccupation with punishing the rapists is about Lannister pride, while Tyrion, who can never be a knight, is the one who stays behind to take care of Tysha.

> My brother unsheathed his sword and went after them, while I dismounted to protect the girl. 
> 
> […]
> 
> They’d torn the rags she was wearing half off her back, so I wrapped her in my cloak while Jaime chased the men into the woods. By the time he came trotting back, I’d gotten a name out of her, and a story. 
> 
> […]
> 
> Jaime was all in a lather to hunt down the men. It was not often outlaws dared prey on travelers so near to Casterly Rock, and he took it as an insult. The girl was too frightened to send off by herself, though, so I offered to take her to the closest inn and feed her while my brother rode back to the Rock for help.   

While Jaime takes on a much more masculine role of hunting down the men in the name of honor, it’s interesting to me that Tyrion’s role here is much more like a feminine, nurturing role. I think there’s also a parallel to be made here with what GRRM does with Brienne in Jaime’s narrative, who he uses as a character to show _true_ knighthood in contrast with a masculine ideal of knighthood. True knighthood comes from caring for others, not from heteronormative ideas of knights and ladies. This concept also reappears in Sansa’s storyline, with Sansa as the mouthpiece of what true knighthood should be. True knighthood in this series, I would argue, is feminine, or at least, atypically masculine. And back to Tyrion’s “In the dark I am the Knight of Flowers,” line. The Knight of Flowers, of course, is a knight who appears to have all the performative pieces of what it means to be a knight, but who, in the dark, hides his own atypical romance with another man.

There’s another layer of deceptive appearances in the Tysha story, as Tyrion spends most of his formative years thinking that this early romantic experience was a lie, blanketed with another layer of sexual trauma. And, not coincidentally, it’s Jaime who perpetuates that lie, and Jaime who reveals the truth to Tyrion at the end of ASOS. Tyrion really WAS Tysha’s knight but was not allowed to be, because Tysha was lowborn and because Tyrion himself is a dwarf.

It’s also worth noting that Tyrion’s chivalric impulses are all towards fallen women, women and girls who are not the typical object of chivalric protection. “He has these fits of gallantry from time to time,” says Jaime of Tyrion, remarking on how odd it is for a dwarf to have chivalric impulses at all. Tywin also points out this behavior in Tyrion with Alayaya:

> Tyrion would not deny it. “I made threats, yes. To keep Alayaya safe. So the Kettleblacks would not misuse her.”    
> 
> “To save a whore’s virtue, you threatened your own House, your own kin? Is that the way of it?”   

To Tywin, it is illogical for Tyrion to extend protection to a woman who sells her body at the risk of those of noble, more worthy birth. But it’s perhaps because of Tysha or because of his own place in society as a high born dwarf, or because of his distance with his family, and his own experience with sexual abuse, that Tyrion’s knightly impulses extend towards such women. 

Meanwhile, young Jaime learns that although it is his job as a knight to protect women of noble birth, such as Queen Rhaella, he cannot protect her from the King himself. This is the injustice of chivalry: “Protect women, but only those of noble birth, and only when that doesn’t conflict with the desire of a noble born man.” 

Although Jaime may extend protection to the kinds of women Tyrion associates with, he dissociates with them and thinks of them as “more fitting for Tyrion’s bed than his.” He specifically tells Brienne - albeit in a joke - that he “only rescue[s] maidens,” because he’s learned the rules of chivalry through his own traumatic experiences. He tells Brienne that it is better for a high born maiden to be dead than to be raped.

Sansa is an unusual case - another liminal character - because she is a noble born girl who often inspires chivalric protection in those around her, because of her delicate, ladylike femininity. She’s also, however, the fallen daughter of a traitor, and that is part of what inspires a protective impulse for her in Tyrion. For Jaime, Sansa is “his last chance at honor”, the noble born princess that could perhaps renew his status as chivalrous white knight.

Finally, this parallel and contrast is seen in Tyrion and Jaime’s relationship with Penny and Brienne, respectively. As stated above, Brienne is a true knight, the embodiment of what knightly compassion should be, as seen through a female lens. Jaime’s protective instincts towards Brienne are very in line with heteronormative chivalry: protect the honor of noble born women. Yet they are deconstructed because of Brienne’s gender nonconforming activities and her unattractive appearance. Jaime does not know what to make of her half the time, simultaneously seeking to protect her and berating her while he’s at it. Tyrion’s relationship with Penny is similar, but in keeping with Tyrion’s nontraditional chivalric impulse, Penny is a common woman who would not be the object of chivalric romance, being both lowborn, unattractive, and disabled. She is a perfect mirror for Tyrion’s chivalric empathy because she is also a dwarf, and is thus both the object of Tyrion’s compassion and repulsion.

I think there’s also something to be said about Tyrion’s murder of Shae and Jaime’s eventual murder of Cersei, and how that also fits with the differing trajectory of Tyrion and Jaime’s arcs, but I’ll leave that unsaid for now.


	20. Daenerys and Slut-Shaming

The conception of sexual purity used to villify women is something that comes up quite often in Dany’s storyline, so it’s unsurprising that antis would use it against her. Misogyny damns women for being prudes, damns them for being victims, and damns them for being freely sexual all at the same time. That’s how Viserys can call Dany Drogo’s slut after he himself is responsible for forcing her into sexual slavery, while also lusting after her himself.

Dany has never been allowed to be pure, she has never been treated as a nonsexual object. She was raped and married as a young girl and then called a slut for it. After marriage to Drogo, she was supposed to take her place in the Dosh Khaleen as a woman who has been used up, defiled, no longer pure and without a husband to keep her in line. Because a woman without a husband who is no longer a maiden, a woman whose sexuality belongs only to her, is not supposed to be visible.

But Dany does not stay hidden. She is open about her sexuality, taking consorts and lovers who are both men and women, noble and common. In ADWD we see that there are rumors about her as a woman who is sexually perverse, someone who will sleep with anyone and steals men’s souls through sex. Men fear women who won’t conform to their notions of sexual purity, thus Dany has become a figure both lusted after and vilified. She embodies the figure of the Madonna to those who love her and the whore to those who hate her.


	21. Daenerys Targaryen and "Madness"

So…y’all should know that calling women “crazy” has a long misogynistic history, and that this fandom has long called Dany mad for absolutely everything that she does, but also the idea of madness has a specific connotation in Dany’s story, because she’s both fighting against her own family history and the conceptions of herself as a young woman, plus the fact that she’s an abuse victim who has been gaslit her entire life by men. So madness is something that comes up a lot in her story.

> “No. He cannot have my son.” She would not weep, she decided. She would not shiver with fear. The Usurper has woken the dragon now, she told herself … and her eyes went to the dragon’s eggs resting in their nest of dark velvet. The shifting lamplight limned their stony scales, and shimmering motes of jade and scarlet and gold swam in the air around them, like courtiers around a king.    
> 
> Was it **madness** that seized her then, born of fear? Or some strange wisdom buried in her blood? Dany could not have said. She heard her own voice saying, “Ser Jorah, light the brazier.”   
> 
> “Khaleesi?” The knight looked at her strangely. “It is so hot. Are you certain?”
> 
> **She had never been so certain**. “Yes. I … I have a chill. Light the brazier.” 
> 
> He bowed. “As you command.”    
> 
> When the coals were afire, Dany sent Ser Jorah from her. She had to be alone to do what she must do. This is **madness** , she told herself as she lifted the black-and-scarlet egg from the velvet. It will only crack and burn, and it’s so beautiful, Ser Jorah will call me a fool if I ruin it, and yet, and yet …    
> 
> Cradling the egg with both hands, she carried it to the fire and pushed it down amongst the burning coals. The black scales seemed to glow as they drank the heat. Flames licked against the stone with small red tongues. Dany placed the other two eggs beside the black one in the fire. As she stepped back from the brazier, the breath trembled in her throat. 

Dany’s certainty that she has to put the dragon eggs in the fire comes from something inside her that she doesn’t understand and isn’t quite sure whether to trust, because she’s been taught her whole life to doubt herself and her own opinions. Yet she is certain, even as she describes this certainty as “madness.”

> She could feel the eyes of the khalasar on her as she entered her tent. The Dothraki were muttering and giving her strange sideways looks from the corners of their dark almond eyes. **They thought her mad, Dany realized. Perhaps she was.** She would know soon enough. If I look back I am lost.   

“If I look back I am lost” will become a refrain in Dany’s narrative, as she learns to trust her own judgements and decisions. When she learns from Ser Barristan about the truth about her father, she starts to question whether her own mind can be trusted. And although it is important for Dany to learn about the atrocities her father committed, the idea that her blood is “tainted” is an ableist one that I wish GRRM hadn’t pushed so hard in the narrative. It’s sometimes hard to tell whether Martin wants us to believe in something as true, or question it as something the characters believe that is not objectively true, and many fans believe unquestionably that nonsense about the gods flipping a coin every time a Targaryen is born. Mental illness _can_ be inherited genetically, but treating people like ticking time bombs is not reasonable or humane and equating mental illness with violence or vice versa is also grossly ableist. Dany isn’t “mad” for enacting feudal violence the same way men do in these books.


	22. Tyrion and the Trickster Archetype

Tyrion is both an embodiment of the trickster figure in literature and a deconstruction of it. Specifically Tyrion deconstructs the way that the trope is applied to disabled characters.

> Karl Karenyi has famously suggested that the trickster is the “exponent and personification of the life of the body” (1955, 185). However, for Jung, the trickster “represents an archaic level of consciousness, an ‘animal’ or more primitive self given to more intense expressions of libido, gluttony, and physical abuse” (Russo, 2008, 143). This archetype of the trickster is difficult to shake and calls up many of the worst stereotypes about disability - disability as a lack of reason, as pure appetite and uncivilized impulse. ([source](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fbooks.google.com%2Fbooks%3Fid%3DFIGiAgAAQBAJ%26pg%3DPA218%26lpg%3DPA218%26dq%3Dtrickster%2Bdisability%26source%3Dbl%26ots%3DYGDDpYVRzw%26sig%3DS4hcWINFbSt_6TqeZVRpmgFReM0%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26ved%3D0ahUKEwij2p6ev9zXAhWxUN8KHU7kBLEQ6AEIPjAE%23v%3Donepage%26q%3Dtrickster%2520disability%26f%3Dfalse&t=ZjI1NmU2OWM0MTU2OWQxNzM4YzliNTFkZDQ0N2M2NGM2Y2YzNzhlOCw5T0NPTVBSbw%3D%3D&b=t%3AJnzxZwybDPaSWyBuXZ_E6g&p=https%3A%2F%2Fthemaesters.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F168423234216%2Ftyrion-and-the-trickster-archetype&m=1))

Tyrion is often regarded by other characters in the text as morally perverse or given to excesses, even while many characters in the books display the same behavior. Most notable is Tyrion’s father’s treatment of him as “spiteful little creature” who disgusts Tywin with his drinking and lust - and I’ve long argued that Tywin’s views of Tyrion come less from what Tyrion actually does and more from Tywin’s desire to control his son - but even Jaime labels Tyrion with this stereotype in Tyrion’s very first chapter.

> Even if the boy does live, he will be a cripple. Worse than a cripple. A grotesque. Give me a good clean death.“    
> 
> Tyrion replied with a shrug that accentuated the twist of his shoulders. “Speaking for the grotesques,” he said, “I beg to differ. Death is so terribly final, while life is full of possibilities.” 
> 
> Jaime smiled. “You are a perverse little imp, aren’t you?”   
> 
> “Oh, yes,” Tyrion admitted. “I hope the boy does wake. I would be most interested to hear what he might have to say.” 

And Tyrion’s response is to play the role, as he often does. The scene here, one of the very first scenes Martin gives us from Tyrion’s POV, presents us with Tyrion’s disability closely linked to his role as trickster. In fact, Tyrion purposely accentuates his physical abnormality as he reminds his brother that he is one of the “grotesques”. Jaime accuses him of being “perverse”. Tyrion here also embodies several other characteristics of tricksters.

> In mythology, and in the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a character in a story (god, goddess, spirit, man, woman, or anthropomorphisation), which exhibits a great degree of intellect or secret knowledge, and uses it to play tricks or otherwise disobey normal rules and conventional behaviour. ([source](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FTrickster&t=Njk2NTU5NWFjOTU4NGJkYmM5ZjU4YjlmYTlmYTFkZTVkY2M3MDNkMCw5T0NPTVBSbw%3D%3D&b=t%3AJnzxZwybDPaSWyBuXZ_E6g&p=https%3A%2F%2Fthemaesters.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F168423234216%2Ftyrion-and-the-trickster-archetype&m=1))

In this scene Tyrion implies knowledge that he should not have of Bran’s fall, and uses it to deliberately provoke his brother and sister. He points out not only how his existence defies normal societal rules - he is a “grotesque” who if firmly determined to live his life to the fullest despite what society thinks is acceptable - but also he calls attention to the taboo secret of Cersei and Jaime’s affair.

One of the things that is really interesting about Tyrion is that he both embodies the role of malformed trickster and rails against it. His performance of the role contains a certain irony or bitterness, as in the scene where he meets Jon Snow for the first time.

> “Did I offend you?” Lannister said. “Sorry. Dwarfs don’t have to be tactful. Generations of capering fools in motley have won me the right to dress badly and say any damn thing that comes into my head.” He grinned. 

Of course, Tyrion is not sorry for offending Jon, as he deliberately provoked him in the first place. But the phrase “generations of capering fools in motley” has such wonderful contempt to it and shows us that Tyrion doesn’t think this is much of a privilege, even though he is willing to use it, to shove the role he’s been stereotyped with in people’s faces. His speech here to Jon about not forgetting what you are is also about not letting other people forget, much as they might seek to marginalize you with it. Which is why Tyrion is always the first to make a joke about himself before others do, the first to remind others of their jokes about him and the last to forgive.

Throughout the series, Tyrion becomes increasingly weary of this role, which is a direct contrast to the archetype of the trickster who usually remains untouched by the narrative. Like the standard Trickster archetype, Tyrion is a survivor - “life is full of possibilities” - who uses unconventional means - “my mind is my weapon” - but he does not emerge unscathed by his trials. The mental and physical trauma that he endures take their toll on him until the play isn’t funny anymore. In ADWD Tyrion’s indulgence in excesses go from socially transgressive to self-destructive. Previously they represented his determination to live, but at the beginning of ADWD they begin to represent a destructive force that is directed both inward and outward. I’ve seen a lot of discussion of Tyrion’s alcoholism and sex addiction and how destructive that becomes in ADWD, but even food plays that role. We see Tyrion eating a lot in the books. In fact, the scene in Tyrion’s very first chapter mentioned above also involves Tyrion eating a hardy breakfast, complete with beer to wash it down. Tyrion does not skimp on enjoying life. Yet in ADWD food becomes destructive. First represented in the scene with the poisonous mushrooms, buttered and presented at table as if harmless, but secretly hiding the desire for self-destruction.

Then there’s Tyrion’s excessive eating when he is on the road with Illyrio, punctuated with excessive drinking and dreams and nightmares of what he’s lost.

Although all three of these things (sex, food, and alcohol) quickly become scarce for Tyrion after he leaves Illyrio’s company.

I also think it’s interesting that Tyrion’s descent into depression and self loathing is punctuated by the loss of his nose, one of the body parts emphasized as a part of the grotesque body that embodies the spirit of the carnival, the realm of the undisciplined and the mischevious. Tyrion’s traumatic scarring both represents the deconstruction of the trickster figure as untouchable and outside the narrative and represents the chipping away of Tyrion’s sense of self by being forced to embody this role.


	23. The Problem With Shae

I’ve had a lot of feelings about Shae floating around which I’ve found difficult to articulate as someone who is interested in reading asoiaf from both a feminist and a disability perspective because so much of Tyrion’s story is about how his relationships with women are informed by his disability. And Shae sits very closely at the heart of that. This is also muddied by how the author treats Shae, and further muddied by how the show has rewritten her to suit its needs.

The reality of Shae is that she is a sex worker who is murdered by her employer, the man who ostensibly loves her. She’s poor, barely legal by modern standards, and was probably a victim of sexual abuse as a child. A lot of blame ends up falling on Shae because she ends up having to testify against Tyrion during his trial, but it’s obvious that she has very little choice about the matter and is put into a very dangerous situation that Tyrion brought her into in the first place, and the violence of her death is extremely sexualized. That it is done by a character who was not only her lover and patron but someone we are supposed to sympathize with gave me a lot of pause when I first read it. It almost made me stop reading the series, as someone whose favorite character is Tyrion. Shae is treated horribly by both Tyrion and the narrative, and that is a big problem.

But the other problem is that Shae is, in the books, a hollow character and a pretty terrible person. This, of course, doesn’t make what happens to her any less awful. The show turns Shae into a Pretty Woman trope, someone who is able to see past Tyrion’s disability and love him the way he wants to be loved, and even to change him for the better (because show Tyrion is also a gendered stereotype, the frat boy who never grew up). Book Shae is literally the opposite of show Shae, someone who was only interested in Tyrion for his money after all. And I’ve seen a lot of people holding up and defending this aspect of Shae, which I don’t necessarily disagree with because hey, she’s just trying to make a living and Tyrion _knows_ this, except that Tyrion is disabled. Shae’s interest in using him for his money necessarily involves exploiting his disability and his insecurity surrounding it. This is pretty explicit in the text, although it is somewhat hidden by Tyrion’s POV because of his desperate need for someone to love him which leads him to see what he wants to see in Shae and because of his lack of experience with women and loving relationships in general. (Experience paying for sex is not experience with women and relationships).

> “M'lord will never be ugly in my eyes.” She kissed the scab that covered the ragged stub of his nose. 
> 
> “It’s not my face that need concern you, it’s my father—” 
> 
> “He does not frighten me. Will m'lord give me back my jewels and silks now? I asked Varys if I could have them when you were hurt in the battle, but he wouldn’t give them to me. What would have become of them if you’d died?”    
> 
> “I didn’t die. Here I am.”    
> 
> “I know.” Shae wriggled atop him, smiling. “Just where you belong.” Her mouth turned pouty. “But how long must I go on with Lollys, now that you’re well?” 

Which, I mean. On the one hand, it’s not her job to love Tyrion, and it’s unfair to expect her to love him when she’s being paid to have sex with him. And part of her arrangement with Tyrion was that she would get all the silks and jewels she wanted, so I can’t blame her for her priorities. It’s unfair to expect a woman in this situation to be in it for anything other than the money. And a lot of the ways fandom condemns Shae for this are misogynistic.

But then you look at a conversation like this where Shae is dismissive of what Tyrion says, plays on vulnerabilities associated with his disability in order to manipulate him, and makes it very clear that the idea of him dying wouldn’t really hurt her that much, as long as she got her jewels. Imean, well of course she’s lying to you, Tyrion, you paid her to lie to you. But she’s lying to him in a way that exploits his feelings about his disability, and her comment about him dying is cruel and the only reason Tyrion doesn’t notice it is because he wants to believe that she cares about him. Which he also paid her to pretend to do, but it’s not at all pleasant to read about and my first fandom encounters with this situation were all about praising Shae for manipulating an emotionally damaged disabled man as some kind of sexual empowerment, which kinda put a sour taste in my mouth and it hasn’t left. Again, yes I know Tyrion paid her to do this, but that doesn’t mean it should be happening.

I mean, Shae is either not that good at her job or she just doesn’t care that much about Tyrion’s feelings, because the least she could do here is _pretend_ to be sad that he might die. This is where I get into my issues with the way GRRM wrote her, because _are_ we supposed to think Shae is just not that smart, are we supposed to think that she is smart and she just doesn’t care about Tyrion, or is GRRM just bad at writing her?

GRRM does drop a huge load of irony on us in ACOK:

> “A different look, a different smell, a different way of walking,” said Tyrion [about Varys]. “Most men would be deceived.“  
> 
> “And most women, maybe. But not whores. A whore learns to see the man, not his garb, or she turns up dead in an alley.”   

Which is pretty chilling to read in hindsight because of what happens to Shae later. But also I think that it is true that book Shae is the opposite of show Shae. Book Shae really did see Tyrion as a rich dwarf that she could exploit and nothing more, and she never considered him as anything other than harmless because she never truly saw him as a person. She underestimates him the way most people do because of his disability, and that’s evident even in her last scene where she tries the same old tricks she used before to manipulate him.

When I first joined fandom on tumblr I saw this quote being passed around a lot in discussions of Tyrion and Shae: “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them, women are afraid that men will kill them.” Which is a true statement about male privilege and gendered violence, but when applied to Tyrion and Shae it ignores the context of Tyrion’s disability. People use this when they talk about Shae’s humiliation of Tyrion at his trial, but the problem with it is that Tyrion’s life is _very much on the line_ in conjunction with being laughed at, in this specific situation and in others. He’s being framed for regicide. And in many contexts in the series people laugh about the murder and/or abuse of dwarfs. For Tyrion, being laughed at goes hand in hand with being abused and killed because it goes along with the specific ways that dwarfs are dehumanized, both in Westeros and in the real world, throughout history. Tyrion’s hatred of being laughed at isn’t male privilege, it’s a statement about his lack of privilege. Another thing about the trial scene in particular is that the way Tyrion is mocked is very sexual in nature, and plays on the ableism of the crowd. I understand certain reactions to this, because men tend to think that being mocked sexually is the worst thing and justify all sorts of nastiness for it, but Tyrion is not coming at this from a place of privilege, he’s coming at it as a disabled man whose sexuality is openly mocked. He’s also coming at it as a sexual abuse survivor.

Now, that said, I don’t think Shae is responsible for what she said at the trial. I think that Cersei and Tywin forced her to testify, although I think Shae was smart enough to play up on her own Tyrion as the sexual deviant monster and to play up her own innocence. What she says about him is so personal and that’s why it hurts so much. She brings up her pet name for him, one that is going to be inherently funny to the crowd and call attention to his disability, - a name that when they were alone made Tyrion feel good and like his disability didn’t matter - and frames it as if the name was his idea and not hers. Again, I don’t blame Shae for the shitty situation she is in but her testimony is awful to read and uncomfortably plays on ableist tropes.

Shae’s ableism is not limited to Tyrion. Of the very few interactions she has with other characters (which is itself a problem related to the way she is written) Shae also says problematic things about Lollys, and some pretty gross things about other women as well. She’s not a nice person and while I get the impulse to defend terrible female characters (I love terrible female characters!) the idea that it’s empowering for women to shit on other marginalized folks is something I really, really dislike and see often in fandom.

Another thing about Shae that is really sad and goes along with the fact that Shae just doesn’t have any significant interactions with characters other than Tyrion in the book is that even though Tyrion is her murderer, he’s also the only character that has any kind of empathy for her. This is a flaw with the writing, it’s a flaw that is so much bigger than Tyrion. The show tries to rectify this by having Shae interact with other characters, but they also created this mess of the character who ended up being a mix of stereotypes and faux empowerment, who still had to die when the plot called for it.

Note that I am NOT saying that Tyrion is the _real_ victim here or that Shae wasn’t a victim of Tyrion and that her death wasn’t awful, but what I am saying is that there’s a reason why people react so strongly and so contentiously to this narrative and it’s not just because of misogyny directed at Shae (although there certainly is that, too, as well as classism), and I don’t like it when people disregard Tyrion’s disability as an aspect of his character in favor of focusing solely on his privilege, especially in a book series so full of commentary on power and abuse and how these things can be wielded in different ways.


	24. Sansa, Tyrion, and Beauty and the Beast

In the midst of discourse about how Sansa “deserves” to end up with someone beautiful, I’d just like to remind y’all that beauty and the beast exists to combat specific tropes, specifically the idea that beauty=goodness, and the primary reason that this is important is because that old insidious trope stems from, inherently, ableism. And ableism is one of those isms that can be found inside almost any prejudice. Biological differences have long been used to justify sexism and racism. So now that we’ve got that out of the way…

A lot of people seem to consider Beauty and the Beast to be the fairy tale for people who don’t like fairy tales, which I get because as I said above, it’s a subversion of older tropes. But it’s still a pretty old story, and entrenched in the rules of fairy tales.

I get that some of the push back is related to the fact that BatB stories are often gendered in a specific way, and the unintentional implication is that women specifically need to learn to love ugly men, without the reverse being a requirement. And I don’t necessarily disagree, but here’s the thing. In the most common versions of the BatB story, it’s not Beauty who has to learn to look beneath the surface. She’s usually placed in that position already at the beginning of the story.

In the 1700s French version of the story, it is Beauty alone among all her father’s children who asks for the most humble gift, a single rose. Whereas his other daughters and sons ask for clothing and jewels, weapons and finery, Beauty alone is not dazzled by material possessions. Of course, we know, that because this is a fairy tale, the single rose that Beauty asks for is the most valuable of the lot, because fairy tales are about enchantment, and when something is enchanted it’s much more than it appears to be.

One of the true values in fairy tales is that they teach us to look deeper, that things aren’t always what they seem to be. The apple is poisoned, the beast is really a prince, what we thought was real and valuable was really nothing but ashes.

In the Disney version of BatB, Belle sings a whole damn song at the beginning of the movie about how she wants more out of life than what is presented to her. She rejects the physically handsome yet internally hideous Gaston. Her favorite story is about a prince who doesn’t appear to be a prince. She is very quick to pick up on the fact that the Beast’s castle is enchanted, and its inhabitants are not what they seem. Because she is a fairy tale heroine, she knows the rules of the story.

Sansa, too, knows these rules. Her favorite tale is Florian and Jonquil, which is, inherently, a story about looking beyond appearances. This is why she’s able to look kindly upon Sandor and Tyrion, despite being entrenched in society’s rules about knights and ladies.

Not to say that Sansa is entirely free from society’s judgements. She is frightened of Sandor’s disfigurement and has ableist thoughts about Tyrion, but she’s also able to extend empathy to them where others are not. I would argue that the story here is not about throwing out the fairy tales and learning a lesson about her own shallowness, I think the lesson she is learning is about how society is shallow and learning to parse what is real and what is merely an illusion, learning to use her own judgements, which is what fairy tale heroines do.

> The silence went on and on, so long that she began to grow afraid once more, but she was afraid for him now, not for herself. She found his massive shoulder with her hand. “He was no true knight,” she whispered to him.   

She’ll have to use this logic when she contends with Petyr Baelish as well. She already knows that Baelish is more than he appears to be, but he’s the opposite of a fairy tale prince in disguise. Petyr Baelish is harmless and charismatic, but Littlefinger is the monster hiding beneath the surface, and Sansa is already struggling with this dichotomy:

> …and sometimes it seemed to her that the Lord Protector was two people as well. He was Petyr, her protector, warm and funny and gentle … but he was also Littlefinger, the lord she’d known at King’s Landing, smiling slyly and stroking his beard as he whispered in Queen Cersei’s ear. And Littlefinger was no friend of hers. When Joff had her beaten, the Imp defended her, not Littlefinger. When the mob sought to rape her, the Hound carried her to safety, not Littlefinger. When the Lannisters wed her to Tyrion against her will, Ser Garlan the Gallant gave her comfort, not Littlefinger. Littlefinger never lifted so much as his little finger for her.    
> 
> Except to get me out. He did that for me. I thought it was Ser Dontos, my poor old drunken Florian, but it was Petyr all the while. Littlefinger was only a mask he had to wear. Only sometimes Sansa found it hard to tell where the man ended and the mask began. Littlefinger and Lord Petyr looked so very much alike. She would have fled them both, perhaps, but there was nowhere for her to go. 

There’s a lot going on in this passage and a lot of it makes explicit reference to BatB and fairytales and the hypocrisy of chivalry. Sansa contrasts LF with Tyrion and Sandor, who are very obvious “Beast” figures, and Dontos who she likens to Florian - the true knight who appears to be a fool, and Garlan Tyrell, who is another yet less obvious “Beast” figure.

> Perhaps she ought to have remained beside her husband, but she wanted to dance so badly … and Ser Garlan was brother to Margaery, to Willas, to her Knight of Flowers. “I see why they name you Garlan the Gallant, ser,” she said, as she took his hand.   
> 
> “My lady is gracious to say so. My brother Willas gave me that name, as it happens. To protect me.” 
> 
> “To protect you?” She gave him a puzzled look.    
> 
> Ser Garlan laughed. “I was a plump little boy, I fear, and we do have an uncle called Garth the Gross. So Willas struck first, though not before threatening me with Garlan the Greensick, Garlan the Galling, and Garlan the Gargoyle.”   

Everywhere Sansa turns this imagery is in her story. I think it’s significant that this story about Garlan appears in the context that it does, after Sansa leaves her disabled husband at the table in favor of someone she associated with “her Knight of Flowers”, someone who for her represents all the beauty she is attracted to in King’s Landing, only to find out that her Gallant knight is another beast in disguise. (Note that I am not saying it is wrong for Sansa to “not remain beside her husband” as she thinks, because she is under no obligation to someone she has been forced to marry. And it’s Tyrion who rejects her offer to dance, not Sansa who rejects him, because Tyrion is embarrassed by the whole scenario and is afraid of being mocked for his disability. This marriage makes me so sad, y’all. I just think it’s significant that this conversation with Garlan is framed this way. Also note that Tyrion is called a “gargoyle” by Cersei in the same chapter.)

(This also brings me to another point about BatB, which is that it’s usually the beast who has to learn not to judge by appearances. This is specifically stated in the Disney version and in both Sansa’s interactions with Sandor and Tyrion, both of whom are highly insecure about their appearance.)


	25. Arya and the Female Journey

Arya’s journey is very much a feminine one and I wish it was recognized as such instead of people writing her off as “like a boy”. A major theme in Arya’s story is identity and it plays out in a way unique to her relationship with her femininity. Both Sansa and Arya are threatened with having their identities subsumed by a patriarchal society; Sansa by a society that treats her as a consumable object, and Arya because she can’t fit into that little box of what a woman should be according to patriarchal standards.

While Sansa’s journey involves being boxed in, her identity sold to the men around her who seek to possess her, Arya’s journey involves her being flung far across the continent and eventually landing in a place where, because she cannot be a wife and she cannot be a knight or a lord or a high septon, she literally (nearly) becomes no one at all. Because she won’t give up her name to a man, she must surrender her name entirely. Because she does not conform to the male gaze, she must become faceless. This is how women who don’t fit a certain standard are treated in real life. If you can’t or won’t play the game patriarchy wants you to play, then you are no one, and society and the media does their best to pretend that you don’t exist. Arya must give up her body because she refuses to give it, she must give up her emotions because she’s too emotional. She must contain and control herself because she won’t conform, she must make herself smaller and smaller until she doesn’t exist at all.

> “The price is you. The price is all you have and all you ever hope to have. We took your eyes and gave them back. Next we will take your ears, and you will walk in silence. You will give us your legs and crawl. You will be no one’s daughter, no one’s wife, no one’s mother. Your name will be a lie, and the very face you wear will not be your own.” 

On a meta level, this is very much a story about being a woman. About how patriarchy asks you to give all of yourself until you either fit into that little box or you get treated like you’re an androgynous, faceless being and not a woman at all.


	26. Tyrion and His Big Mouth

> For a small man, he had been cursed with a dangerously big mouth, he reflected as he crawled back to his corner of what the Arryns laughably called their dungeon. 

This quote, from AGOT Tyrion V, seems to be the source of the idea that Tyrion “can’t keep his mouth shut” or has never been in a situation where he has been forced to keep his mouth shut. I’m going to disprove this but first of all, it’s kind of funny that this idea is often used against Tyrion, and people say that Tyrion doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut, when this idea comes from Tyrion himself. These are Tyrion’s thoughts. You can tell that GRRM is using a close psychic distance here because of the end of the sentence describing the Arryn dungeon as laughable. I love Tyrion’s extremely bitter and petty attempt to compensate for the fact that he’s been arrested by making fun of the dungeon in his head.

Anyway, so Tyrion thinks to himself that he should have kept his mouth shut rather than mouthing off to the turnkey after he ends up getting a kick for it. But just because this is Tyrion’s thought doesn’t mean that Tyrion is incapable of keeping his mouth shut. Anyway I think it’s unethical to blame Tyrion for not keeping his mouth shut when he is being grossly abused while under arrest for something he didn’t do, and the turnkey was actually goading Tyrion into getting angry and reacting so that he would have an excuse to hurt him.

> “Is beans,” Mord said. “Here.” He held out the plate.    
> 
> Tyrion sighed. The turnkey was twenty stone of gross stupidity, with brown rotting teeth and small dark eyes. The left side of his face was slick with scar where an axe had cut off his ear and part of his cheek. He was as predictable as he was ugly, but Tyrion was hungry. He reached up for the plate. 
> 
> Mord jerked it away, grinning. “Is here,” he said, holding it out beyond Tyrion’s reach.    
> 
> The dwarf climbed stiffly to his feet, every joint aching. “Must we play the same fool’s game with every meal?” He made another grab for the beans.    
> 
> Mord shambled backward, grinning through his rotten teeth. “Is here, dwarf man.” He held the plate out at arm’s length, over the edge where the cell ended and the sky began. “You not want eat? Here. Come take.” 
> 
> Tyrion’s arms were too short to reach the plate, and he was not about to step that close to the edge. All it would take would be a quick shove of Mord’s heavy white belly, and he would end up a sickening red splotch on the stones of Sky, like so many other prisoners of the Eyrie over the centuries. “Come to think on it, I’m not hungry after all,” he declared, retreating to the corner of his cell. 
> 
> Mord grunted and opened his thick fingers. The wind took the plate, flipping it over as it fell. A handful of beans sprayed back at them as the food tumbled out of sight. The turnkey laughed, his gut shaking like a bowl of pudding.    
> 
> Tyrion felt a pang of rage. “You fucking son of a pox-ridden ass,” he spat. “I hope you die of a bloody flux.”   
> 
> For that, Mord gave him a kick, driving a steel-toed boot hard into Tyrion’s ribs on the way out. 

The set up here tells us that the way Mord treats Tyrion is something that has happened before. Tyrion says that Mord is “predictable” and that they “play the same fool’s game with every meal”. Tyrion is used to being made fun of for his height but it’s when he refuses to play Mord’s cruel game - because he thinks he might fall off the cliff edge - Mord throws his dinner down the cliff edge. Prompting Tyrion to react in anger. So let’s review. Tyrion is repeatedly abused and mocked and refuses to cooperate with the abuse, gets angry, and is further punished for it. And then he chastises _himself_ for not being able to keep his mouth shut, but I think his anger here is understandable.

Anyway, here’s a list of times that Tyrion is forced to keep his mouth shut. Most of them involve Tyrion’s father because Tyrion often is psychologically incapable of talking back to Tywin. Tyrion often thinks of things that he wants to say but then has to edit himself because he’s often not in a position where he can say what he’s truly thinking, or he has to rephrase it so that it becomes inoffensive, or pass it off as just a dwarf making a joke.

> That was when he knew. _You have given him up for lost, he thought. You bloody bastard, you think Jaime’s good as dead, so I’m all you have left._ Tyrion wanted to slap him, to spit in his face, to draw his dagger and cut the heart out of him and see if it was made of old hard gold, the way the smallfolks said. **Yet he sat there, silent and still**.   
> 
> —
> 
> Their brother had been much younger when Cersei wed the first time; he might not acquiesce to a second marriage quite so easily. The unfortunate Willas Tyrell was like to contract a sudden fatal case of sword-through-bowels, which could rather sour the alliance between Highgarden and Casterly Rock. **I should say something, but what?** _Pardon me, Father, but it’s our brother she wants to marry?_
> 
> _—_
> 
> It is past time you were wed.”
> 
> **_I was wed, or have you forgotten?_ Tyrion’s mouth twisted, and the noise emerged that was half laugh and half snarl.**
> 
> “Does the prospect of marriage amuse you?”
> 
> “Only imagining what a bugger-all handsome bridegroom I’ll make.”
> 
> —
> 
> On the other hand, there was Shae. _She will not like this, for all she swears that she is content to be my whore_.
> 
> **That was scarcely a point to sway his father, however** , so Tyrion squirmed higher in his seat and said, “You mean to wed me to Sansa Stark.”
> 
> —
> 
> You must needs take her maidenhead, so no man can say the marriage was not consummated. After that, if you prefer to wait a year or two before bedding her again, you would be within your rights as her husband.”
> 
> **_Shae is all the woman I need just now_ , he thought, _and Sansa’s a girl, no matter what you say_.** “If your purpose here is to keep her from the Tyrells, why not return her to her mother?”
> 
> —
> 
> A shocked silence fell. Sansa pulled away from Joffrey, but he had a grip on her, and her sleeve ripped. No one even seemed to hear. Queen Cersei turned to her father. “Did you hear him?”    
> 
> Lord Tywin rose from his seat. “I believe we can dispense with the bedding. Tyrion, I am certain you did not mean to threaten the king’s royal person.”    
> 
> **Sansa saw a spasm of rage pass across her husband’s face. “I misspoke,” he said**. “It was a bad jape, sire.” 
> 
> —
> 
> Griff rounded on him. “Unless you can cut this fog with your next witticism, keep it to yourself.”    
> 
> **Yes, Father, the dwarf almost said. I’ll be quiet. Thank you.**
> 
> —
> 
> “There’s no need for this,” Tyrion protested. “I will be a good little prisoner, I will, I will.”    
> 
> “Prove it, then, and shut your mouth.”    
> 
> **So he bowed his head and bit his tongue as the chains were fixed** , wrist to wrist, wrist to ankle, ankle to ankle. These bloody things weigh more than I do. Still, at least he drew breath. 
> 
> —
> 
> “Your dwarf is having a fit,” the widow observed. 
> 
> “My dwarf will be quiet, or I’ll see him gagged.”
> 
> **Tyrion covered his mouth with his hands.** _Meereen!_
> 
> —
> 
> “What do you plan to offer the dragon queen, little man?”    
> 
> **My** **hate** , **Tyrion** **wanted** **to** **say**. Instead he spread his hands as far as the fetters would allow. “Whatever she would have of me.”


	27. Arya, Femininity, and Class

I’ve been thinking about how Arya is more comfortable around people who are of lower birth than her because gender roles are less strict for the commonfolk of Westeros. The bar for performing gender is set higher the higher up you go in class because women are valued on their ability to obtain an advantageous marriage so the performance of femininity needs to be perfect (see Brienne). In contrast, women who have to work for a living can’t afford the kind of femininity meant to convey delicacy. This is why Arya is more comfortable around women like the prostitutes in Braavos.

Then I was thinking about how Gendry’s perception of Arya changes when he realizes that she is high born. There is Gendry’s obvious disdain for the upper classes, understandable since he’s been a victim of classism. But there’s also the subtle sexism in the way his demeanor changes from learning she’s a girl, to learning that she is a _high born girl_.

Because high born girls are held to a higher standard of gender performance, their femininity is seen as more delicate and in need of protecting. Witness the way Gendry demands for Arya to prove that she’s a boy when he correctly guesses that she’s a girl, but a lowborn girl, or so he thinks. He knows she’s a girl, and intentionally teases her using coarse language, telling her to “pull out your cock”. Then when he learns she’s high born, the tune changes.

> “You were a lord’s daughter and you lived in a castle, didn’t you? And you … gods be good, I never …“ All of a sudden Gendry seemed uncertain, almost afraid. "All that about cocks, I never should have said that. And I been pissing in front of you and everything, I … I beg your pardon, m'lady.”

All of the sudden, Gendry becomes embarrassed. He had no problem talking about cocks in front of Arya when he thought she was a peasant, but ladies are not supposed to be exposed to such things. I think there’s also something to be said about how the highborn performance of gender is supposed to be asexual. Highborn women are sexual objects but are not sexual themselves. This is seen in Sansa’s naivete about the actual act of sex. She’s been told only what she needs to know to be available for a husband.

In contrast, lowborn women are seen as more sexual, more experienced, less in need of protection. When she is living as a peasant girl, Arya experiences sexual harassment and in ACOK she is disillusioned of the idea that knights will protect her because she no longer looks like the innocent high born maid that Westeros puts on a pedestal.


	28. Brienne and Hyle Hunt

So recent discussions about Hyle Hunt and his relationship to Brienne have prompted me to write, because this is a part of Brienne’s story that I feel very strongly about and which I do not often see discussed. There’s a lot of discussion about Sansa and rape culture or Daenerys and rape culture or Cersei, but not a lot of talk about how rape culture specifically affects women like Brienne, and that’s not a coincidence. Rape culture wants you to believe that women are at fault for being too sexual, too beautiful, too enthusiastic, too forward. Rape culture wants you to believe that men are just helpless in the face of these women. Rape culture doesn’t want to acknowledge that women get targeted even if they are ugly, or shy, or conservative.

When Brienne comes to Highgarden, she is eighteen, inexperienced, painfully shy, and aware that she is not attractive to men and treated as a joke for not fitting societal expectations.

> It was not the scorn of the many that left her confused and vulnerable, but the kindness of the few. The Maid of Tarth had been betrothed three times, but she had never been courted until she came to Highgarden. 

The first time a boy asked me out, I was eleven, nerdy and quiet with coke-bottle glasses. He asked me to the sixth grade dance while his friends looked on and laughed. I said no, like Brienne, because why would a boy ask me out? I wasn’t sexy or pretty. What I didn’t understand was that it was _because_ I wasn’t these things that these boys thought they could “get” me, that it was all part of their game, that they felt entitled to me because nobody else would have me and I should be flattered by the attention. After I refused him he called me a bitch. 

Now I’m an adult and a teacher, and I see this same scenario play out over and over again in the halls of my school. I see it stopped by the boy or girl who is brave enough to say “hey, man, leave her alone,” and I feel a great swell of pride for my kids because they are smart and compassionate and wise. But I read about it happening in other schools, about unpopular girls and vulnerable girls being manipulated and coerced and assaulted. These boys don’t see these girls as worthy of their attention but they still feel entitled to them. In fact, it’s because they see these girls as beneath them that they feel particularly entitled. These guys will say that it’s all a joke but then they become angry when they are refused.

These kinds of “jokes” continue into adulthood. A lot of fraternity culture revolves around making hook ups into a “game”. And these things don’t happen individually, they’re a collaborative effort to attract vulnerable women and get them into a position where either they can’t say no or their no is discarded because the women themselves are discredited as less than worthy human beings.

> Big Ben Bushy was the first, one of the few men in Renly’s camp who overtopped her. He sent his squire to her to clean her mail, and made her a gift of a silver drinking horn. Ser Edmund Ambrose went him one better, bringing flowers and asking her to ride with him. Ser Hyle Hunt outdid them both. He gave her a book, beautifully illuminated and filled with a hundred tales of knightly valor. He brought apples and carrots for her horses, and a blue silk plume for her helm. He told her the gossip of the camp and said clever, cutting things that made her smile. He even trained with her one day, which meant more than all the rest. 

Like the boy who was encouraged by his friends to ask me out as a joke, Hyle Hunt is not doing this to Brienne by himself. He’s not even the first. All of these men are known as honorable knights individually, but collectively they entrench themselves in the same culture that encourages men to coerce and manipulate women.

Ser Hyle Hunt may not be singly responsible for what the men did to Brienne, but he is remembered by her as one of the first who made an impression on her. He outdid her first two suitors in two important ways. One, he appeals to Brienne’s love of chivalric romance stories by bringing her a book, a meta reference to the mockery of knightly courting that is being carried out here (if you think Martin isn’t doing this on purpose, you haven’t been paying attention). Second, he trains with her, which means more to Brienne than anything. Not only is he appearing to treat her as a woman and give her affection, he validates Brienne’s choice to live as a knight even as the rest mock her for it. It’s not surprising that Hyle’s betrayal hurts Brienne more than all of her other “suitors”.

Hyle’s actions also appear to Brienne to encourage the other men. She at first thinks of this as a kindness.

> **She thought it was because of him that the others started being courteous.** More than courteous. At table men fought for the place beside her, offering to fill her wine cup or fetch her sweetbreads. Ser Richard Farrow played love songs on his lute outside her pavilion. Ser Hugh Beesbury brought her a pot of honey “as sweet as the maids of Tarth.” Ser Mark Mullendore made her laugh with the antics of his monkey, a curious little black-and-white creature from the Summer Islands. A hedge knight called Will the Stork offered to rub the knots from her shoulders. 

This is all fairly cruel, but is it harmless, as Hyle tells Brienne it is?

> Brienne refused him. She refused them all. When Ser Owen Inchfield seized her one night and pressed a kiss upon her, she knocked him arse-backwards into a cookfire.

The “game” eventually leads to Brienne being assaulted, which I think is overlooked because it’s one line in the text and she is able to defend herself physically. But now we’ve moved past just giving gifts and making offers as a “joke” to forced kisses. There’s a clear escalation here which proves that this is anything but harmless. Randyll Tarly knows this, which is why he has it stopped, but he still blames Brienne for corrupting what he deems as “honorable knights” and tells her it would have been her fault if she had been raped. Which is the story we hear over and over again, even if the woman is ugly, or shy, or conservative or not interested in sex. 

“I did naught to encourage them,” Brienne says. 

“Your being here encouraged them,” is the response. 

Women are assaulted and have their boundaries disrespected just for existing in front of men, no matter what they are doing or did to “encourage” the attention.

> Afterward she looked at herself in a glass. Her face was as broad and bucktoothed and freckled as ever, big-lipped, thick of jaw, so ugly. All she wanted was to be a knight and serve King Renly, yet now …   
> 
> […]
> 
> Why are you being kind to me? she wanted to scream, every time some strange knight paid her a compliment. What do you want?    

And men wonder why women don’t trust them.

I was going to add something here against the idea that Hunt has changed and is appropriately apologetic for his cruelty towards Brienne, and talk about how he spends most of his time in AFFC trying to get Brienne to forgive him for what he deems a “harmless game” which was a gross violation of her personal boundaries, and tries to make amends by constantly following her around and continuing to violate her boundaries and telling her that what she really wants is for him to sneak into her room at night against her will (he actually says this!), but I’m not going to go into all that because it doesn’t matter. This is Brienne’s story and Brienne is under no obligation whatsoever to forgive him.


	29. Bronn and Lollys

There’s been something that’s been bothering me for a while now about fan interpretations of Bronn.

I generally don’t get why people like Bronn so much to begin with, although I guess it’s because he’s funny and gets away with being unabashedly terrible in a way that our main characters usually don’t. Specifically though I want to talk about Bronn and Lollys Stokeworth.

I see a lot of people saying things like “I’d like to think that Bronn was a nice and loving husband to Lollys”, which, I mean good for you I guess? I think that in some cases this comes from a desire to want good things for Lollys, since the text treats her so terribly, coupled with the fact that Bronn is a fan favorite, but the thing is that, knowing what we know about Bronn and the situation, things in the text actually look horrible for Lollys, and pretending that they are okay or that Bronn is a good husband to her feels wrong.

First of all, Bronn doesn’t talk about Lollys - or any woman for that matter - in any way that inspires me to believe that he values her as a person. He treats her like a prize he’s won and his ticket to social status and makes jokes to Tyrion about fucking her. Lollys is treated as either a joke or a burden by the text as a general rule, and the way Bronn talks about her is as if she’s a nonperson. Now, it’s quite possible that Lollys consented to marriage and sex with Bronn and it should be acknowledged that disabled people can and do consent to sex, but the issue of Lollys’ consent doesn’t even come up in the text. Disabled people are also much more likely to be raped, and in general arranged marriages between the nobility are not about the consent of the bride - and indeed Lollys is also a victim of rape even before she marries Bronn.

I feel sad for Lollys in general because I don’t think that even her family treated her particularly well. It’s implied through Shae that her family keeps her drugged - because of the pregnancy or because they simply want to keep her out of sight and mind, I’m not sure. Her mother seems desperate to marry her off to whoever will take her with little regard for Lollys herself. I think a particularly telling scene is when Lady Tanda speaks to Sansa during the Purple Wedding:

> The sight of [Joffrey’s death] had been too terrible to watch, and [Sansa] had turned and fled, sobbing. Lady Tanda had been fleeing as well. “You have a good heart, my lady,” she said to Sansa. “Not every maid would weep so for a man who set her aside and wed her to a dwarf.”

There’s a few things going on here. One is that Lady Tanda clearly thinks that Sansa being married to Tyrion is a great slight. Which is telling considering that Lady Tanda herself was not long ago trying to get Tyrion to marry Lollys. It’s also telling that she specifically implies that it’s a slight _because Tyrion is a dwarf_. This comment shows that she lacks respect for Tyrion, and by extension doesn’t care that much about who her daughter is married to as long as she gets something out of it (she was probably only interested in Tyrion for his wealth and family name), and also shows that she holds some ableist views, which may extend to her views on her disabled daughter as well.

Neither Bronn nor Lady Tanda talk about and treat Lollys as if her personhood matters. And then of course Bronn names her daughter after Tyrion as a joke - a particularly dangerous one, as Tyrion is an attainted traitor. Then, when predictably this causes the crown to turn against him, he murders Lollys’ family and steals her lands. What a dude. We don’t know what Lollys’ thoughts are on her brother in law’s death at the hands of her husband, or her sister’s banishment, or the fact that her home and all her family’s assets as well as her person are now owned by her new husband, because the text is not concerned with Lollys as a person. We don’t know what happens to Lady Tanda, who breaks her hip in an accident, but it is heavily implied via Cersei’s thoughts that she is probably already dead because Bronn certainly doesn’t care about her.

So yeah, I don’t particularly like Bronn - which may come as a shock since Tyrion is my favorite character - and I don’t like the popular view in fandom of Bronn and Lollys’ supposed domestic bliss. In general I am very suspicious any time someone wants to romanticize an arranged feudal marriage, but in this case I am especially not down with it.


	30. Male Entitlement, Assumed Consent, and Disabled Bodies

In asoiaf there are many child marriages, and almost all marriages in the series, I would argue, take place in a scenario absent of consent. We could waffle on the meaning of consent in a feudal society and whether consent is possible in medieval arranged marriages, but this meta is not about that.

There are two major child marriages that occur in the series: Dany and Drogo and Tyrion and Sansa. I don’t think it’s up for debate that in situations involving a child consent is dubious at best. And both of these situations also have an element of force not present in normal arranged marriages in Westeros. Both Sansa and Dany are abuse victims sold into marriages they do not want as political pawns, by people who could care less about their well-being. There are differences though both between the way these marriages are written and the way they are perceived by the fandom.

First I want to talk about the way GRRM writes these scenarios. I’ve never really been able to reconcile the way Martin writes Dany, especially with regard to her marriage to Drogo. I feel that Martin does not write Dany as the child she is, especially when compared to the way he writes Sansa, who does read as a child to me. Both girls are terrified on their wedding night to an older man that they’ve been forced to marry, yet the scenario with Dany ends with her becoming physically aroused and saying yes to sex with Drogo.

And even though Dany says “yes”, her yes happens in a situation where she is under duress, as a child sold into marriage, and thus I would argue that Dany and Drogo’s wedding night is in fact a rape despite Dany’s yes. It’s often not perceived that way in fandom, and part of that reason is the way it’s written. Drogo touches and undresses her, but since his touches are gentle and Dany is eventually aroused by them, readers forget that he did not obtain consent to undress and touch Dany. He did not obtain consent to marry Dany, and married and began to touch her even though she was frightened and unwilling. I’ve never really been able to reconcile Dany’s initial terror to her arousal at the end of the passage, because to me her terror would override any desire she would feel, but I also acknowledge that abuse victims deal with their situations in multiple ways and Dany’s yes at the end of the passage is a way for her to take back agency in a situation where she has none. This is often read as romantic by fans, which I think is a misreading of the text but I also put part of the blame on Martin for the way he writes the scene.

In contrast, Tyrion and Sansa’s marriage does not end in consent and consummation. Sansa is terrified of Tyrion and nothing that Tyrion does is going to change that. Tyrion also knows this. And of course one of the major differences between Tyrion and Drogo is that Tyrion knows that he is not attractive to women because he is disabled. He goes into the marriage reluctant for multiple reasons, but one of them is the insecurity about his own disabled body which leads him to assume that Sansa would automatically reject him. There’s no scene of Tyrion attempting to seduce Sansa, because he knows it’s not possible.

I’d argue that one of the differences between the way these scenes are written and the way they are perceived by fandom is the idea of assumed consent. I don’t think consent is an issue for Drogo the way it is for Tyrion because he does not have the insecurity about his body that Tyrion does. He has not been taught that he has no right to sex and love, and on the contrary as a man in a society which encourages men to be dominant and aggressive and values the able-bodied man, Drogo feels entitled to Dany’s body in a way that Tyrion does not.

There’s also the issue that Tyrion is coerced into the marriage by Tywin, whereas Drogo enters into the marriage freely, yet fans often see Tyrion as predatory towards Sansa whereas Drogo is not perceived this way. I would argue that this has to do with assumed consent on the part of readers. We buy into the way Dany and Drogo’s marriage is written, with Dany initially reluctant but seduced by Drogo’s gentleness and raw physicality, whereas if we applied this to Tyrion and Sansa it would be ludicrous. Because there is no assumption that Sansa would ever find Tyrion attractive. In fact, there is the assumption that of course she would reject him.

Of course, Sansa also gets accused of shallowness by misogynistic fans who think that Tyrion deserves Sansa, but that’s a different sort of entitlement and one I’d argue is fanon and not one that Tyrion shares. But within a certain subset of fandom that is concerned with consent and feminist issues, I think there is a tendency to see Tyrion as predatory towards Sansa where Drogo’s assault on Dany is often forgiven, even though there is no outside pressure on Drogo to do what he does, and I think that has a lot to do with the perception of disabled people as predators or as unable to obtain consent. Of course that’s not the only issue with Tyrion and Sansa, but I find the fact that Tyrion often gets accused of entitlement despite his unwillingness to marry Sansa and his desire not to hurt her to be disproportionate to the romanticizing of Drogo and the willingness to overlook his obvious entitlement to Dany. I also think this applies to other problematic marriages in Westeros, especially those regarding Sansa, and there’s more to be said on this subject, but this is something that has been bugging me for a while as a disabled reader and I’m not even sure if I’ve articulated all my feelings on the topic.


	31. Devil Babies, Changelings, and Lord Tywin's Doom

> “We were in Oldtown at your birth, and all the city talked of was the monster that had been born to the King’s Hand, and what such an omen might foretell for the realm.“ 
> 
> “[…] a stiff curly tail like a swine’s. Your head was monstrous huge, we heard, half again the size of your body, and you had been born with thick black hair and a beard besides, an evil eye, and lion’s claws. Your teeth were so long you could not close your mouth, and between your legs were a girl’s privates as well as a boy’s.”   

I was rereading Jane Addams’ early twentieth century account of the story of _The Devil Baby at Hull House_ (which is a great essay about the lives of immigrant women at the time btw), and the similarities between the way the Devil Baby is described and the description of the infant Tyrion above prompted me to do a little research.

> The knowledge of the existence of the Devil Baby burst upon the residents of Hull-House one day when three Italian women, with an excited rush through the door, demanded that he be shown to them. No amount of denial convinced them that he was not there, for they knew exactly what he was like, with his cloven hoofs, his pointed ears and diminutive tail; ([source](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Fmagazine%2Farchive%2F1916%2F10%2Fthe-devil-baby-at-hull-house%2F305428%2F&t=NTYzZDA4YzBjMjY5YjczMjU4ODU0OGFiYTkwODRiNGMwMDI1MmU2Niw3RzRneHJNVA%3D%3D&b=t%3AJnzxZwybDPaSWyBuXZ_E6g&p=https%3A%2F%2Fthemaesters.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F148826136432%2Fdevil-babies-changelings-and-lord-tywins-doom&m=1))

The story of the Devil Baby in Hull House is not the only such account in existence. The story bears a lot of similarities with the way that infants born disabled are often seen as being brought about by satanic influences or by witchcraft, or changeling stories where a perfect human child is replaced by something monstrous. The Devil Baby case was unique because it happened in the modern age.

> The devil baby incident took place in the fall of 1913. Addams reported that Hull House was overrun with inquiries for a period of six weeks, probably triggered by the birth of a baby with disabilities in the neighborhood. The Chicago Tribune labelled the case a phenomenon of “outcropping medievalism” ([source](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fbooks.google.com%2Fbooks%3Fid%3DoO-9jX9KAeMC%26pg%3DPA103%26lpg%3DPA103%26dq%3Dthe%2Bdevil%2Bbaby%2Bat%2Bhull%2Bhouse%2Bfeminism%26source%3Dbl%26ots%3D4oaTijB34z%26sig%3DrBk41MV0ZyeOp1ZjY6EZYWCRIwk%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26ved%3D0ahUKEwi92oXHjrfOAhXI8CYKHRqsCc4Q6AEITDAH%23v%3Dsnippet%26q%3Ddisability%26f%3Dfalse&t=N2Q3OGQ4YzU0NmIwMTU5YWMxZTg0MDRmY2FiODM3OTdlYzEyNTgyMyw3RzRneHJNVA%3D%3D&b=t%3AJnzxZwybDPaSWyBuXZ_E6g&p=https%3A%2F%2Fthemaesters.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F148826136432%2Fdevil-babies-changelings-and-lord-tywins-doom&m=1))

Another thing that the story of the devil baby and Tyrion’s birth have in common, and indeed you find this in many accounts of the births of disabled children and in accounts of “monstrous” or “satanic” births, is that the existence of the child is said to have some kind of message, sometimes a punishment for the crimes of the child’s parents.

> The Italian version, with a hundred variations, dealt with a pious Italian girl married to an atheist. Her husband vehemently tore a holy picture from the bedroom wall, saying that he would quite as soon have a devil in the house as that; whereupon the devil incarnated himself in her coming child. As soon as the Devil Baby was born, he ran about the table shaking his finger in deep reproach at his father 

Which also bears similarity to the way Tyrion’s birth is described as specifically a religious punishment for his father:

> “Lord Tywin had made himself greater than King Aerys, I heard one begging brother preach, but only a god is meant to stand above a king. You were his curse, a punishment sent by the gods to teach him that he was no better than any other man.”

The infamous [Malleus Maleficarum](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FMalleus_Maleficarum&t=ZTI0ZWZlYjg3NDUwNmY0MmE2ZWVkMjYyZDg2OWVmZDY1NjZiN2ExZCw3RzRneHJNVA%3D%3D&b=t%3AJnzxZwybDPaSWyBuXZ_E6g&p=https%3A%2F%2Fthemaesters.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F148826136432%2Fdevil-babies-changelings-and-lord-tywins-doom&m=1) describes demonic births as divine punishment, but for another reason:

> According to the _Malleus_ , God permitted these curious events for two reasons. First, “when the parents dote upon their children too much”, it was for their own good that they undergo divine punishment ([source](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=denied%3Adenied%3A-%2520http%3A%2F%2Fwww.independentliving.org%2Fdocs7%2Fmiles2005b.html%23changelings&t=MTRlOWUwY2VhMWNmZTEwZTg4ODAzNGZiZmY3YzJkMzZmM2Y5ODFlZSw3RzRneHJNVA%3D%3D&b=t%3AJnzxZwybDPaSWyBuXZ_E6g&p=https%3A%2F%2Fthemaesters.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F148826136432%2Fdevil-babies-changelings-and-lord-tywins-doom&m=1))

It is not surprising, then, that Tyrion’s birth is seen as a punishment for Lord Tywin, for whom his legacy and the continuation of his house through his children is one of the most important goals.

> “Tywin dreamed that his son would be a great knight, that his daughter would be a queen. He dreamed they would be so strong and brave and beautiful that no one would ever laugh at them.“

Part of the reason that the idea of Tyrion’s birth being a punishment for Tywin’s folly, I suspect, had become so widely believed in Westeros is because of House Lannister’s great pride in its legacy, and specifically Cersei and Jaime as Tywin’s beautiful golden progeny.

This is also, I think, related on a meta level to theories (which I don’t subscribe to but which are interesting to study for the purposes of this meta) that Tyrion is not Tywin’s son. I think Tywin would very much like to believe in these theories himself. And if Tywin were a person living in our own middle ages, he wouldn’t have to look far to “prove” that Tyrion was not in fact his son but a replacement, the spawn of some demon or fairy creature.

> "Another terrible thing which God permits to happen to men is when their own children are taken away from women, and strange children are put in their place by devils.” (Kramer & Sprenger, transl. 1928/1971, p. 406)
> 
> […]
> 
> There were believed to be three sorts of these beings known as _Wechselkinder_ (changelings).
> 
> […]
> 
> “For some are always ailing and crying, and yet the milk of four women is not enough to satisfy them.” ([source](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=denied%3Adenied%3A-%2520http%3A%2F%2Fwww.independentliving.org%2Fdocs7%2Fmiles2005b.html%23changelings&t=MTRlOWUwY2VhMWNmZTEwZTg4ODAzNGZiZmY3YzJkMzZmM2Y5ODFlZSw3RzRneHJNVA%3D%3D&b=t%3AJnzxZwybDPaSWyBuXZ_E6g&p=https%3A%2F%2Fthemaesters.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F148826136432%2Fdevil-babies-changelings-and-lord-tywins-doom&m=1))

And this last bit is also something similar to what is said about Tyrion:

> “You were never seen at table or hall, though sometimes at night we could hear a baby howling down in the depths of the Rock. You did have a monstrous great voice, I must grant you that. You would wail for hours, and nothing would quiet you but a woman’s teat.“ 

Often in changeling myths the baby is said to be insatiable, always craving human milk and yet never seeming to grow and in some cases, becoming sicker.

> "though they are very heavy, they are always ailing and do not grow, and cannot receive enough milk to satisfy them, and are often reported to have vanished away.”

It’s very likely that these children had congenital disabilities or were suffering from some kind of illness. I get the impression from the text that Tyrion was sickly at his birth, or at least was thought to be so because of his dwarfism.

> ‘It doesn’t matter,’ [Cersei] told us. 'Everyone says he’s like to die soon. He shouldn’t even have lived this long.'”  

The secular explanations for disabled infants as demonic in origin and the pagan belief in changelings has similar ableist origins.

> People have interpreted anomalies in babies as messages from God for centuries. Sixteenth-century surgeon Ambroise Paré told of a woman who birthed a child with wings, a horn and a single foot as a sign of the misfortunes that were to come when Pope Julius II waged war against King Louis XII. The ancient Egyptians revered dwarfs as earthly representations of the gods Bes and Ptah.
> 
> Early Scottish folklore believed that elves or fairies would take away desirable children and in their place leave a changeling – an elfin child, who would grow up peevish and malcontent. The reality behind those myths, which are pervasive in many western European nations, is that changelings were often children born with Down’s syndrome or other disabilities like Prader-Willi syndrome, cerebral palsy and spina bifida. ([source](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsociety%2F2015%2Fapr%2F24%2Fbabies-abnormalities-downs-syndrome-god-chemical&t=NzFhMTA5YzYwYjVkMTdhOWUzMGEwMWY4YTEzOThjNzM4MzcwZDNjOSw3RzRneHJNVA%3D%3D&b=t%3AJnzxZwybDPaSWyBuXZ_E6g&p=https%3A%2F%2Fthemaesters.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F148826136432%2Fdevil-babies-changelings-and-lord-tywins-doom&m=1))

The changeling myth is common in medieval folklore and closely connected to fears over disability:

> The theme of the swapped child is common in medieval literature and reflects concern over infants thought to be afflicted with unexplained diseases, disorders, or developmental disabilities. ([source](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FChangeling&t=NTUwMzdhODNmMGViM2ViYTU2OGEzYWFlZTE2YzMxNjhhM2RhOTAxMiw3RzRneHJNVA%3D%3D&b=t%3AJnzxZwybDPaSWyBuXZ_E6g&p=https%3A%2F%2Fthemaesters.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F148826136432%2Fdevil-babies-changelings-and-lord-tywins-doom&m=1))

Sometimes these myths are specifically connected to dwarfism. In German folklore, changelings were sometimes birthed by female dwarfs ([source](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FChangeling&t=NTUwMzdhODNmMGViM2ViYTU2OGEzYWFlZTE2YzMxNjhhM2RhOTAxMiw3RzRneHJNVA%3D%3D&b=t%3AJnzxZwybDPaSWyBuXZ_E6g&p=https%3A%2F%2Fthemaesters.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F148826136432%2Fdevil-babies-changelings-and-lord-tywins-doom&m=1)), who were fairy creatures and not actual humans, but these myths were most definitely inspired by the existence of people with dwarfism. Given the fact that many people have the depressing (and untrue) assumption that a person with dwarfism cannot be born to able-bodied parents, I could see something like this given as an explanation for a child like Tyrion being born.

The changeling myth is connected to a specific dichotomy created between able-bodied, desirable children and disabled children, and the fear of having a disabled child:

> In Ireland, looking at a baby with envy – “over looking the baby” – was dangerous, as it endangered the baby, who was then in the fairies’ power. So too was admiring or envying a woman or man dangerous, unless the person added a blessing; the able-bodied and beautiful were in particular danger. Women were especially in danger in [liminal](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FLiminality&t=ZGMxYWViNzJlYmI4YmUxNGRiMjA1NTk1ODczOTIwODY0NTQzZDhmNSw3RzRneHJNVA%3D%3D&b=t%3AJnzxZwybDPaSWyBuXZ_E6g&p=https%3A%2F%2Fthemaesters.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F148826136432%2Fdevil-babies-changelings-and-lord-tywins-doom&m=1) states: being a new bride, or a new mother.
> 
> In Wales the changeling child ( _plentyn cael_ (sing.), _plant cael_ (pl.)) [initially resembles](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FShapeshifting&t=MmZkZTQ2ODFmNDQ3OTk5ZDI1ZTgyMTlkODc3ZmU1NzYyZTM3MmNkZSw3RzRneHJNVA%3D%3D&b=t%3AJnzxZwybDPaSWyBuXZ_E6g&p=https%3A%2F%2Fthemaesters.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F148826136432%2Fdevil-babies-changelings-and-lord-tywins-doom&m=1) the human it substitutes, but gradually grows uglier in appearance and behaviour: ill-featured, malformed, ill-tempered, given to screaming and biting. It may be of less than usual intelligence, but again is identified by its more than childlike wisdom and cunning. ([source](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=denied%3AIn%2520Ireland%2C%2520looking%2520at%2520a%2520baby%2520with%2520envy%2520%25C3%25A2%25C2%2580%25C2%2593%2520%2522over%2520looking%2520the%2520baby%2522%2520%25C3%25A2%25C2%2580%25C2%2593%2520was%2520dangerous%2C%2520as%2520it%2520endangered%2520the%2520baby%2C%2520who%2520was%2520then%2520in%2520the%2520fairies%27%2520power.%255B14%255D%2520So%2520too%2520was%2520admiring%2520or%2520envying%2520a%2520woman%2520or%2520man%2520dangerous%2C%2520unless%2520the%2520person%2520added%2520a%2520blessing%3B%2520the%2520able-bodied%2520and%2520beautiful%2520were%2520in%2520particular%2520danger.%2520Women%2520were%2520especially%2520in%2520danger%2520in%2520liminal%2520states%3A%2520being%2520a%2520new%2520bride%2C%2520or%2520a%2520new%2520mother.%255B15%255D%2520In%2520Wales%2520the%2520changeling%2520child%2520%28plentyn%2520cael%2520%28sing.%29%2C%2520plant%2520cael%2520%28pl.%29%29%2520initially%2520resembles%2520the%2520human%2520it%2520substitutes%2C%2520but%2520gradually%2520grows%2520uglier%2520in%2520appearance%2520and%2520behaviour%3A%2520ill-featured%2C%2520malformed%2C%2520ill-tempered%2C%2520given%2520to%2520screaming%2520and%2520biting.%2520It%2520may%2520be%2520of%2520less%2520than%2520usual%2520intelligence%2C%2520but%2520again%2520is%2520identified%2520by%2520its%2520more%2520than%2520childlike%2520wisdom%2520and%2520cunning.&t=NTViYzdkOGJiNjA4ZDY2NDI3ZmE0NzA5ZjdiMTAzZjkzNmRlNTJhMyw3RzRneHJNVA%3D%3D&b=t%3AJnzxZwybDPaSWyBuXZ_E6g&p=https%3A%2F%2Fthemaesters.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F148826136432%2Fdevil-babies-changelings-and-lord-tywins-doom&m=1))

The “childlike wisdom and cunning”, as well as amoral behavior is also something that is said of Tyrion by characters in the text. They are also specific stereotypes related to dwarfism. Tywin states that he sometimes forgets that Tyrion is not a child; the name “Imp” denotes a childlike mischief as well as demonic, monstrous, or fairy origin.

Back to That Theory (you know the one) although the idea according to the Tyrion Targaryen theory isn’t that Tyrion is a literal changeling, of course (although there is that one theory about [time traveling fetuses](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fasoiaf%2Fcomments%2F30mat2%2Fspoilers_all_ddt_a_neverbeforeseen_theory%2F&t=OGJkMTc0OGMzN2Q4OWE5MzdkMzZlOThiYjUyMDcxZWQ5MzZkZjhiMiw3RzRneHJNVA%3D%3D&b=t%3AJnzxZwybDPaSWyBuXZ_E6g&p=https%3A%2F%2Fthemaesters.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F148826136432%2Fdevil-babies-changelings-and-lord-tywins-doom&m=1)), I make a connection here between the idea of the “swapped child” and the idea that Tyrion is not in fact Tywin’s son but another’s, raised in place of Tywin’s son and with magical (Targaryen) heritage. Not that I believe this theory. My point is that I think it’s bunk.

The clues that are oft cited as evidence of Tyrion not being Tywin’s son are interesting if analyzed in the context of myths about disabled children. I don’t believe that Tyrion is a secret magical Targaryen baby any more than he is a punishment from the gods set to bring about famine, or any more than I believe there was actually a devil baby born in the early nineteen hundreds in Chicago. I think Tywin would love to believe that his disabled son was really the result of magical Targaryen genes and not his perfect legacy, but Tyrion is not a changeling.


	32. Sansa, Tyrion, Kneeling Part 2

So, I’m tackling the whole kneeling thing again. Here we go.

In answer to the question: “why didn’t Tyrion ask Sansa to kneel for the cloaking, instead of tugging on her skirt?“

Now, I’m not here to blame Sansa. I think that’s clear but apparently I still have to say it.

Given how on the defensive Tyrion is with Sansa I am pretty sure that had he thought about asking Sansa to kneel he would have assumed that she would laugh in his face, and that everyone else would laugh at him asking for her to accommodate his disability. He probably didn’t even think beforehand about the cloaking. I know from personal experience that you don’t always account for your disability in every situation and it’s easy to forget and embarrassing when it happens and even more embarrassing when you have to ask for assistance. That is the world that Tyrion lives in, one where he is dependent on people who he knows are actively hostile to him. 

People act like it’s Tyrion’s responsibility to accommodate his disability, which I especially dislike because Tyrion neither chose nor wanted the situation to begin with. This is a good example for the social model for disability, because the reason this problem exists is because of social expectations of how a man should behave at his wedding.

> The bride’s cloak he held was huge and heavy, crimson velvet richly worked with lions and bordered with gold satin and rubies. No one had thought to bring a stool, however, and Tyrion stood a foot and a half shorter than his bride. As he moved behind her, Sansa felt a sharp tug on her skirt. He wants me to kneel, she realized, blushing. 

There’s no real reason that Tyrion HAS to cloak his bride except for societal expectations that he should. It’s a tradition that assumes that a man should have physical height and strength over his bride, and reasserts that as the right and just way things should be, ascribing moral weight to the non-disabled masculine body. Tyrion only experiences his disability as a lack here because of how the wedding ceremony has been built to exclude people like him. Everything about the situation highlights how much Tyrion struggles with the cloaking, and how little anyone cared to accommodate him. The heaviness of the cloak and how awkward it is for Tyrion to carry is emphasized. And this is all happening very publicly and Tyrion went in to it reluctant and knowing that it would be humiliating, knowing that this crowd of people, none of whom are there because they actually care, are all too eager to see him brought low for their amusement. This is the context here. To ignore this context and act like Tyrion is just a man who is pissy because a woman won’t bow down to him is to miss that context. The very idea that Sansa has to kneel is hilarious to the crowd and seen as a humiliation for both Sansa and Tyrion because Tyrion’s dwarfism makes him a pariah and Sansa is a pariah by being married to him, even though she was forced into it. The patriarchal power that Tyrion is given over Sansa is a big joke because Tyrion is disabled and not a “real” man.

> She was mortified. It was not supposed to be this way. She had dreamed of her wedding a thousand times, and always she had pictured how her betrothed would stand behind her tall and strong, sweep the cloak of his protection over her shoulders, and tenderly kiss her cheek as he leaned forward to fasten the clasp.   

Now, I don’t really blame her for looking unfavorably on Tyrion’s dwarfism here, but what she thinks here emphasizes Tyrion’s inability to play a social masculine role because of lack of accommodation for his disability. Had she not been forced into the marriage, she probably would not have cared that Tyrion could not reach her shoulders. But because she’s been forced into it, she looks unfavorably on Tyrion’s disability and contrasts it with a romantic ideal. Tyrion knows this, too. He knows that he is not what Sansa wants and that he cannot fulfill the role a man is supposed to play on his wedding day, and that asking her to kneel is only emphasizing this.

People have responded to this like “well what do you expect Tyrion?” and I’m pretty sure Tyrion expected exactly what happened.

Since the cloaking is a symbol of a woman’s identify being transferred from her father’s house to her husband’s, I suspect it is unique to high born marriages. This is consistent with the fact that the higher you go up in class the stricter gender roles become, especially for women. There was no cloaking for Tysha, no demand that Tyrion has to perform an able-bodied man’s role. Which is another way that Tyrion’s marriage to Tysha was a threat, by undermining the class system in Westeros and the inherent misogyny and ableism therein.

This is why the response to Tyrion’s lack is not to provide him with a stool or simply just bypass the cloaking ceremony. Tyrion’s lack must be called attention to and he must be humiliated for it, by being made to stand on the back of a fool in a parody of a mummer’s show, thus reinforcing the place of dwarfs as jesters and anomalies.

Tyrion being made to stand on Dontos’ back actually has very little do with Sansa or her choice not to kneel. In fact, because she has chosen not to kneel, she must also be punished by being cloaked in the most humiliating way. If her refusal to kneel is a sign of her lack of consent, then Tyrion being made to stand on Dontos back is a sign that her consent does not actually matter, nor does Tyrion’s. She will be cloaked one way or another, and Tyrion will be used as a tool in his own humiliation as well as Sansa’s.


	33. Sansa and Tyrion Parallels

**Using social expectations as armor, particularly those that are seen as weaknesses:**

> “Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not. **Wear it like armor** , and it can never be used to hurt you.”

-Tyrion, AGOT

> A **lady’s armor** is courtesy.

-Sansa, ACOK

**Abused as children:**

> ****“I only want to be loyal.”
> 
> “Loyal,” the dwarf mused, “and far from any Lannisters. I can scarce blame you for that. **When I was your age, I wanted the same thing**.” **  
> **

\- Sansa, ACOK

**Traumatic experiences of marriage contrasting with idealistic views of what marriage should be:**

> It was not supposed to be this way. **She had dreamed of her wedding a thousand times** , and always she had pictured how her betrothed would stand behind her tall and strong, **sweep the cloak of his protection over her shoulders, and tenderly kiss her cheek** as he leaned forward to fasten the clasp.  

-Sansa, ASOS

> “ **The first time I wed** , there was us and a drunken septon, and some pigs to bear witness. We ate one of our witnesses at our wedding feast. Tysha fed me crackling and I licked the grease off her fingers, and **we were laughing when we fell into bed**.” 

-Sansa, ASOS

**Well versed in the heraldry and history of the nobility:**

> He belonged to Lord Tywin, but the fierce, bearded young man who liked to walk the battlements alone in a black cloak patterned with white suns had been taken by some hedge knight who meant to get rich off him. **Sansa would have known who he was** , and the fat one too, but Arya had never taken much interest in titles and sigils. 

-Arya, ASOS

> “The Boltons skin their enemies.” Jaime remembered that much about the northman. **Tyrion would have known all there was to know about the Lord of the Dreadfort** , but Tyrion was a thousand leagues away, with Cersei. 

-Jaime, ASOS

**Know how to act in social situations:**

> **Sansa would have sighed and shed a tear for true love** , but Arya just thought it was stupid. She couldn’t say that to Ned, though, not about his own aunt.

\- Arya, ASOS

> Once Jaime might have countered with a smile and a threat, but one-handed cripples do not inspire much fear. He wondered what his brother would do. **Tyrion would find a way**.

-Jaime, ASOS

**Idealism crushed by the world:**

> **Their dreams were full of songs and stories, the way hers had been** before Joffrey cut her father’s head off. Sansa pitied them. Sansa envied them.

-Sansa, ASOS  

> **He had dreamed enough for one small life**. And of such follies: love, justice, friendship, glory. As well dream of being tall. It was all beyond his reach, Tyrion knew now. 

-Tyrion, ADWD

**Want to marry for love:**

The thought made Sansa weary. All she knew of Robert Arryn was that he was a little boy, and sickly. _It is not me she wants her son to marry, it is my claim. **No one will ever marry me for love**._

-Sansa, ASOS

The Stark girl is young, nubile, tractable, of the highest birth, and still a maid. She is not uncomely. Why would you hesitate?“    

_Why indeed?_ “A quirk of mine. Strange to say, **I would prefer a wife who wants me in her bed**.”   

-Tyrion, ASOS

**Love of stories:**

> She pulled a chair close to the hearth, took down **one of her favorite books** , and **lost herself in the stories** of Florian and Jonquil, of Lady Shella and the Rainbow Knight, of valiant Prince Aemon and his doomed love for his brother’s queen.   

\- Sansa, AGOT

> “ **What are you reading about?** ” [Jon] asked.    
> 
> “Dragons,” Tyrion told him. 
> 
> “What good is that? There are no more dragons,” the boy said with the easy certainty of youth.    
> 
> “So they say,” Tyrion replied. “Sad, isn’t it? When **I** was your age, **I used to dream of having a dragon of my own**.” 

-Tyrion, AGOT


	34. Tyrion, Jaime, and Disability

> “Even if the boy does live, he will be a cripple. Worse than a cripple. A grotesque. Give me a good clean death.” 
> 
> Tyrion replied with a shrug that accentuated the twist of his shoulders. “Speaking for the grotesques,” he said, “I beg to differ. Death is so terribly final, while life is full of possibilities.”

I’ve written before about this part in the books and how Tyrion advocates for disability here, and how Jaime is being shockingly unsympathetic when he says this, to Tyrion of all people, although I don’t think he realizes how hurtful it is. I don’t think he even thinks about the fact that Tyrion himself is one of those “grotesques” that Jaime is advocating the death of, and I love that Tyrion responds by “accentuat[ing] the twist of his shoulders” and calling his disability to his brother’s attention.

But this passage also indicates a darker aspect of Tyrion and Jaime’s relationship that perhaps foreshadows what happens between the brothers later:

> Jaime smiled. “You are a perverse little imp, aren’t you?” 
> 
> “Oh, yes,” Tyrion admitted. “I hope the boy does wake. I would be most interested to hear what he might have to say.”    
> 
> His brother’s smile curdled like sour milk. “Tyrion, my sweet brother,” he said darkly, “there are times when you give me cause to wonder whose side you are on.”    
> 
> Tyrion’s mouth was full of bread and fish. He took a swallow of strong black beer to wash it all down, and grinned up wolfishly at Jaime. “Why, Jaime, my sweet brother,” he said, “you wound me. You know how much I love my family.” 

Jaime responds to Tyrion’s speech about the rights of disabled individuals by calling him “a perverse little imp” and then calling into question his loyalty to the Lannisters. For all that Jaime is one of Tyrion’s only advocates especially among his family, he emphasizes here that Tyrion is not a “real” Lannister because of his disability, and implies that Tyrion needs to prove his loyalty to the family. I don’t think Jaime is doing this on purpose but it’s an example of the kinds of perhaps unintentional ableism that Tyrion and people like him encounter even from their loved ones.

Tyrion is also intentionally provoking Jaime to an extent but this is part of Tyrion’s MO. Tyrion is always the first person in the room to point out that he’s a dwarf before anyone gets a chance to use it against him, essentially reminding the reader that he is here and he is a Lannister and he’s very much going to live like one despite being disabled, thank you very much.

I just like the way this exchange establishes some subtle tension between Tyrion and Jaime - and tension between Tyrion’s identity as a Lannister and as a disabled person - while at the same time telling us that Tyrion would forgive Jaime “most anything”.


	35. On Tyrion, Disability, and Staring

No, you are not entitled to stare at disabled people, and twisting this into blaming them for it is disgusting, full stop.

For the record, I am talking about this scene from ASOS:

> Even so, he was dizzy by the time he turned the latch, and the descent down the twisting stone steps made his legs tremble. He walked with the stick in one hand and the other on Pod’s shoulder. A serving girl was coming up as they were going down. She stared at them with wide white eyes, as if she were looking at a ghost. The dwarf has risen from the dead, Tyrion thought. And look, he’s uglier than ever, run tell your friends.   

I have been told that this is an example of Tyrion having a “knee jerk reaction” and being “entitled” and “solipsistic” because he is uncomfortable with being stared at. Never mind that he didn’t do or say anything about it in retaliation, it’s just his thoughts here that are being criticized. Disabled people aren’t even allowed to think thoughts that undermine able-bodied people’s conception of their right to treat them like objects of ridicule and wonder, apparently.

So let’s deconstruct a bit what being stared at means to Tyrion. One of the very first things we learn about Tyrion is that he has been raised with the belief that his last name is the only thing that makes him worth more than the kind of objectification that people with dwarfism are usually subjected to.

> Had I been born a peasant, they might have left me out to die, or sold me to some slaver’s grotesquerie. Alas, I was born a Lannister of Casterly Rock, and the grotesqueries are all the poorer.

So the idea that people with dwarfism exist for able-bodied people to stare at is one that Tyrion has grown up with. The only reason he believes he has been saved from such a fate is his Lannister name. And every time someone stares, it’s a reminder of this, that his humanity is not guaranteed but bought and dependent upon people who actively hate and abuse him.

The other assumption Tyrion has grown up with is that if he were not a Lannister, he might have been murdered just for existing. Even after his birth people expected that he would die. He’s told to believe that his continued existence is a privilege for which he should constantly apologize, especially by his family, because he lived when his mother didn’t.

> When I commented that you seemed a poor sort of monster, your sister said, ‘He killed my mother,’ and twisted your little cock so hard I thought she was like to pull it off. You shrieked, but it was only when your brother Jaime said, 'Leave him be, you’re hurting him,’ that Cersei let go of you. 'It doesn’t matter,’ she told us. 'Everyone says he’s like to die soon. He shouldn’t even have lived this long.’“   

So, back to the scene up top with the servant girl staring at him “as if she were looking at a ghost”. Tyrion here is leaving his sick room for the first time after being severely disfigured and nearly killed during the Battle of the Blackwater. His last chapter at the end of A Clash of Kings is so resonant because it’s Tyrion at his most vulnerable. He is wounded to the point where he is said to be near death, and indeed was initially thought to be dead and discarded with the other dead bodies.

_“He shouldn’t even have lived this long.”_

He knows that he’s dying and is desperate for someone to care, someone to come and tell him that he’ll be alright, that his life is important.

> He would have cried out, if he’d had a mouth. No, that was the dream, he thought, his head pounding. Help me, someone help me. Jaime, Shae, Mother, someone … Tysha …    
> 
> No one heard. No one came. Alone in the dark, he fell back into piss-scented sleep. He dreamed his sister was standing over his bed, with their lord father beside her, frowning. It had to be a dream, since Lord Tywin was a thousand leagues away, fighting Robb Stark in the west. Others came and went as well. Varys looked down on him and sighed, but Littlefinger made a quip. Bloody treacherous bastard, Tyrion thought venomously, we sent you to Bitterbridge and you never came back. Sometimes he could hear them talking to one another, but he did not understand the words. Their voices buzzed in his ears like wasps muffled in thick felt.   

Tyrion’s dream that he doesn’t have a mouth is the sensation of the bandages covering his face leaking into his unconscious, but on another level it’s symbolic for the helplessness that he feels right now, the helplessness that he’s felt his entire life. It’s significant that when he feels at his most alone he feels as if he can’t even cry for help, that not only will no one hear but he is not even allowed a voice.

The people who do come to visit him are not the people he wants, not his friends or people who care about him. They come to look at him and talk over him, reinforcing his sense of isolation and being treated like an object.

He dreams of Tysha, of a better place, of the memory of being cared for. One of the things significant about his memory of Tysha is that she loved not only him but his disabled body.

> They would kiss for hours, and spend whole days doing no more than lolling in bed, listening to the waves, and touching each other. Her body was a wonder to him, and she seemed to find delight in his. Sometimes she would sing to him. I loved a maid as fair as summer, with sunlight in her hair. "I love you, Tyrion,” she would whisper before they went to sleep at night. “I love your lips. I love your voice, and the words you say to me, and how you treat me gentle. I love your face.”    
> 
> “My face?” 

This dream is shattered upon waking, however. If Tysha’s love was enough to make him forget the objectification of others, he now has something new to reinforce the idea that people are always going to be staring at him.

> By the time his squire left, the last of Tyrion’s strength was gone as well. He lay back and closed his eyes. Perhaps he would dream of Tysha again. I wonder how she’d like my face now, he thought bitterly.

So this is the context of that scene where he meets the servant girl on the stairs.

> She stared at them with wide white eyes, as if she were looking at a ghost. The dwarf has risen from the dead, Tyrion thought. And look, he’s uglier than ever, run tell your friends. 

Tyrion’s been told his whole life that he shouldn’t be alive, that his existence is one where he is an object to be stared at. That in fact able-bodied people have a right to stare and he has no right to complain about it. Tyrion frequently uses humor as a coping mechanism when met with the ableism of others, and this is also what he does in this scene. He makes a joke about it. He doesn’t say it out loud to the woman, just makes a joke about it in his head. But apparently disabled people are not even allowed that comfort.

This is not an attitude unique to Westeros, you can find this type of behavior in our own modern world.

> I have dwarfism and although I am stared at on a daily basis, people taking photos of me just seems a step too far. Before mobile phones if someone stared at me I was told to say, ‘why don’t you take a picture it will last longer’. Trouble is a lot of people will. This sort of behaviour is reminiscent of the Victorian freak shows, where people would pay just see human oddities, including dwarfs. Whilst the freaks shows have disappeared, the mind set has not. People still seek a novelty value in those that look different, especially those who for a long time exploited their difference and in many cases who still do. You can hire a dwarf out for your stag do or for St Patrick’s day, so is it no wonder some people find it acceptable to photograph dwarfs in public? Some dwarfs even hire themselves out to be photographed with anyone who is willing to pay. Dwarfism is a rare yet very distinctive disability, which has often been used to amuse others. The problem is, a lot of us are quite boring and do not like to use our size as a form of entertainment we prefer just to try and live a life like everyone else. I suppose some people would see us as quite rude because we are spoiling their fun, which I was once told by a drunken man because I protested at him making fun of my size. 

\- [Take a picture, it will last longer…o no, wait](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fexperiencesofdwarfism.wordpress.com%2F2015%2F02%2F23%2Ftake-a-picture-it-will-last-longer-o-no-wait%2F&t=NTg0NTJmZWM0MjI3Y2IyMzZhMjBmNWMzYTNiOTdlYTNkMzQwZTE0MixheEVaTkZNbA%3D%3D&b=t%3AJnzxZwybDPaSWyBuXZ_E6g&p=https%3A%2F%2Fthemaesters.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F145204020950%2Fon-tyrion-disability-and-staring&m=1)

To say that it’s “solipsistic” for a disabled person to not want to be stared at is entirely ignorant of not only the ableism that Tyrion faces on a daily basis but the institutionalized ableism that is present in our society, and how dehumanizing it is.

To say that it’s a “knee-jerk reaction” and that Tyrion is just making assumptions is invalidating to disabled people and especially people with dwarfism who experience this.

[Here](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.udprogram.com%2Fsupport-1-72-3-1-2-2%2F&t=NzcwYjk2YmIzNzY4Njc1MDMzOWZiOGQ4MjI0ZWUyMjEzZWZlNWQxNyxheEVaTkZNbA%3D%3D&b=t%3AJnzxZwybDPaSWyBuXZ_E6g&p=https%3A%2F%2Fthemaesters.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F145204020950%2Fon-tyrion-disability-and-staring&m=1) are more stories about how staring hurts people with dwarfism.

Being upset at being stared at is not an example of entitlement. Able-bodied people’s insistence that it is an example of _theirs._ I can think of no better example of able-bodied entitlement than the insistence that another person exists for you to stare at them.

For the record, I don’t really blame the servant for her behavior. Although ignorant, I don’t believe it was malicious. Plus she’s, you know, a fictional character. But I DO hold responsible the people that come to me and tell me that Tyrion is not allowed to be upset about this. That’s the kind of ignorance that is actively harmful and needs to stop.


	36. Cersei, Tyrion, and Sex

Cersei absolutely uses sex as a tool against Tyrion, because Cersei is a product of a society that has used sex against her and because one of the few weapons available to her is to feed on society’s ableism, just as Tyrion uses Cersei’s lack of male privilege against her. Cersei has a complicated relationship with sex in general and it is inextricably tied to her relationship with power and personal agency, but with her interactions with Tyrion it is also tied to her ableism and her blaming of Tyrion for killing her mother. (What must Cersei have thought when she heard for the first time that Tyrion had been named after a king who was infamous for hurting women?)

And yeah, Tyrion routinely says gross things about Cersei but you can’t divorce this from the fact that Cersei has also sexually abused Tyrion in the past and used Tywin’s sexual abuse of him to shame him and mock him for attempting to exert sexual agency by choosing who he will marry (”have you married this one yet?”).

I think the kidnapping of Alayaya was more about opportunity than it was about Cersei caring about Tyrion’s sex life, but she _does_ take obvious pleasure in sexually humiliating him. Something which I also suspect is mirrored in ASOS when she arranges for Shae to testify against Tyrion in order to paint him as a sexual deviant in front of the court (the more I think about it the more convinced I am that Cersei scripted what Shae said).

The dream Cersei has about Tyrion in AFFC in which she views him as a sexual threat is strongly tied to her perception of him as a “monster” as well.

> Cersei dreamt that she was down in the black cells once again, only this time it was her chained to the wall in place of the singer. She was naked, and blood dripped from the tips of her breasts where the Imp had torn off her nipples with his teeth. “Please,” she begged, “please, not my children, do not harm my children.” Tyrion only leered at her. He was naked too, covered with coarse hair that made him look more like a monkey than a man. “You shall see them crowned,” he said, “and you shall see them die.”

She not only views Tyrion as a sexual predator in this dream, but as inhuman, covered with hair and looking “more like a monkey than a man”. Subconsciously I do think that this also has to do with Cersei’s trauma which has caused her to view all men as predatory (except Jaime), but she uses Tyrion as a target for this in a decidedly ableist way. Tyrion becomes the monstrous representation of male predatory sexuality because society already views him that way. Notice also the connection with the valanquor prophecy, which is so powerful because it plays on Cersei’s fears of a patriarchal system and because it draws on what everyone already believed about Tyrion, that he was a monster who would cause the doom of House Lannister.

The perception of Tyrion’s sexuality in Westeros’ society is strongly tied into the ableist way that the characters view him, and Cersei is not an exception. This does not excuse Tyrion’s own misogyny towards her but to deny that this has anything to do with ableism and to insist that Cersei is merely reacting to Tyrion’s “creepiness” - while ignoring that Cersei’s violation of Tyrion’s sexual boundaries began when he was just an infant - feels too much like the same old ableist rhetoric in which disabled people are labelled as “creepy” and their sexuality seen as deviant.

I think there’s more that you could say here about this, and about how Tyrion and Cersei’s use of sex against each other has to do with the extremely abusive household they grew up in, one where sexual boundaries were crossed in many ways, from Jaime and Cersei’s relationship to Tywin’s sexual abuse of Tyrion to Cersei’s sexuality being treated like a commodity by her father, to Tywin’s sexual abuse of his father’s mistress.


	37. Tyrion and Kindness

There seems to be a common fan interpretation of Tyrion as someone who thinks he’s a nice person but really isn’t, which I’ve always felt was not true at all. I suspect it’s an interpretation that arises out of what I like to call asoiaf’s “reactionary fandom”, that is, this interpretation is a reaction to certain fans who think that Tyrion can do no wrong. In fact, Tyrion is capable of and does in the text commit acts of great cruelty, but he can also be kind and is motivated by a desire to help others, particularly those he sees as “broken” like himself. Tyrion is both of these things, however I think it’s particularly wrong to say that the text supports an interpretation of the character as someone who thinks he is kind but is in fact cruel, when Tyrion doesn’t actually think of himself as a kind person and is remembered in the text by _other_ characters as kind.

When Tyrion describes himself as a kind or good person, it’s always with self-deprecating sarcasm. Including when he delivers one of his most famous lines, after he gives Bran the design for a saddle that will allow him to ride again.

> Robb Stark seemed puzzled. “Is this some trap, Lannister? What’s Bran to you? Why should you want to help him?”    
> 
> “Your brother Jon asked it of me. And I have a tender spot in my heart for cripples and bastards and broken things.” Tyrion Lannister placed a hand over his heart and grinned.

Tyrion is telling the truth here but there’s an obvious air of the performance, which as I’ve talked about before is a large part of Tyrion’s character. He describes his kindness towards Bran - which in reality is a deeply personal act, as it mirrors Tyrion’s designing of his own saddle that allows him the function of mobility in a world dominated by able-bodied men on horseback - as merely a quirk caused by a “tender spot” in his heart, and completes the performance with a hand over his heart and a grin. Tyrion is playing the role that is expected of him here, the dwarf jester, and doing it in a way that downplays his own altruism. Bran will later remember Tyrion with fondness for this act, even after hostilities intensify between the Starks and the Lannisters.

When Catelyn arrests Tyrion, Tyrion tries to make a case for his own innocence. Tyrion knows that he is innocent of the crimes which he is accused of, but he also knows, or at least suspects, that his family is involved in some way. So he responds to Catelyn’s accusation with sarcasm.

> “My brother is undoubtedly arrogant,” Tyrion Lannister replied. “My father is the soul of avarice, and my sweet sister Cersei lusts for power with every waking breath. I, however, am innocent as a little lamb. Shall I bleat for you?” He grinned.

Although Tyrion distinguishes himself from his family here, he does so with considerable sarcasm and humor. Although many fans view Tyrion as separate from his family on a moral scale, as “the good Lannister”, Tyrion himself does not. Although he is innocent he knows that he is guilty by association. He feels the responsibility for his family’s crimes. This is also the case with Tyrion’s association with Sansa.

Tyrion is forced into marriage with Sansa and although he does try in several cases to protect her from the worst abuses, he also is aware that he is associated with his family and is functionally one of her jailers, especially after they are married. He does make an attempt on their wedding night to connect with her but it’s with the same self-deprecating sarcasm that is part of his identity as a Lannister.

> “I can even be kind. Kindness is not a habit with us Lannisters, I fear, but I know I have some somewhere.“

Tyrion acts much the same way with Sansa during Joffrey’s wedding feast, when he declines to tell her the details of her brother and mother’s death at the red wedding.

> "I … would sooner not know. It would give me bad dreams.”
> 
> “Then I will say no more.”    
> 
> “That … that’s kind of you.”      
> 
> “Oh, yes,” said Tyrion. “I am the very soul of kindness. And I know about bad dreams.”

This conversation is narrated from Sansa’s perspective, who has no idea how to react to Tyrion and is basically operating in survival mode at this point. Sansa does what she knows how to do, and responds with the courtesy that she has adopted as her “armor”, and Tyrion’s response to the statement that it is kind of him not to discuss her family’s murder by the Lannisters intentionally highlights the lie that the two of them have been forced into. Although Tyrion himself had no part in the red wedding and did not approve of Tywin’s scheme, he is aware that he is complicit in what is being done to Sansa and the Starks. Tywin makes him even more complicit by marrying him to Sansa, even though Tyrion did not choose the marriage.

Yet Sansa does remember Tyrion as kind, and thinks of him as such in later books. When Jon Snow hears about Tyrion’s murder of his father, his reaction is disbelief that Tyrion could commit such an act that is considered extremely taboo in patriarchal medieval culture, because he remembers Tyrion as a friend, as someone who was kind to him and Bran.

We as readers are privy to the darker side of Tyrion that characters like Jon are not. However even the crueler, more cynical Tyrion of the later books still carries within him this capacity for kindness, while simultaneously believing that he is not kind. This is clearly seen in his interactions with Penny.

Although he is also cruel to her on several occasions, and his thoughts on her are often less than flattering, Tyrion does have a strong protective streak towards Penny. Yet he believes that his kindness towards her is a lie.

> Sometimes he wanted to slap her, shake her, scream at her, anything to wake her from her dreams. _No one is going to save us_ , he wanted to scream at her. _The worst is yet to come._ Yet somehow he could never say the words. Instead of giving her a good hard crack across that ugly face of hers to knock the blinders from her eyes, he would find himself squeezing her shoulder or giving her a hug. Every touch a lie. _I have paid her so much false coin that she half thinks she’s rich._

What I think is particularly interesting here is that Tyrion doesn’t seem to realize that sometimes lies can themselves be a form of kindness. This is probably because of Tyrion’s own complicated history involving the lie about Tysha and his belief that both Tysha’s and later Jaime’s kindness towards him were lies. Despite this, Tyrion does have an instinct towards kindness which he acts upon with Penny.

Of course I am not trying to argue that Tyrion is 100% kind all of the time or make some kind of judgement about whether he is good or bad, because I think that would be pretty pointless. But when he is kind, he rarely takes credit for his own kindness. He seems to vacillate between believing himself incapable of goodness and a great desire to be seen by others as good. He embodies what GRRM has often stated as a theme of his work, “the human heart in conflict with itself.”


End file.
